When You're Gone
by snapesgirl21
Summary: Re-released. When Stephanie leaves Trenton like a thief in the night, Ranger begins a frantic search for her and the reason she left in the first place. Completed
1. 1 Day Gone

_A/N: This story begins a few weeks after the end of Explosive Eighteen. This story will be from Ranger's POV unless stated otherwise._

 **October 8** **th** **-11:58 pm—Stephanie's POV**

I've always considered the ostrich my spirit animal because when it's scared, it sticks its head in the ground and waits for the danger to pass.

After watching a documentary on Animal Planet, I was disappointed to learn that while ostriches do try to avoid danger, they don't really bury their heads in the ground for long periods of time. They either lay completely flat on the ground, or run away. When ostriches are seen with their heads in a hole, it's actually because they are rotating the eggs in their underground nests. Go figure—my spirit animal is being maternal, not a complete idiot.

I'd been trying to bury my head in the ground over what had happened in Hawaii for over a month. Morelli and I had been distant. Ranger and I had been distant. I had been doing my bounty hunter thing, trying to forget about what had happened. Not just the fight, but what had happened during those ten days that I had been there alone with Ranger. He had come there for work, but it had felt like anything but work. It had been ten days of sex, flirting, and relaxation. It had felt like a honeymoon for the fake marriage we'd made. And it had changed everything.

Eventually, I learned that I couldn't continue living in denial for much longer. I was either going to have to face the situation in front of me, or run. The thought of facing it sent me into multiple anxiety attacks, so I opted to run. The problem was running from Ranger. He had access to so much technology and information that he would try to find me and drag the truth out of me. And that wasn't an option, especially when I didn't know the whole truth myself.

It had taken two weeks of preparation to get myself ready to leave, and I had managed it without raising any suspicions. I'd seen my family and friends during that time and no one had questioned me or given me a reason to think they knew something was up. I didn't like what I was doing—I knew it was going to hurt people, but I didn't see any other way of doing it. I'd someday make my apologies and hope that they could understand my reasons, but for now I just wanted my space. I needed it. I couldn't think with everyone so close to me.

I looked around the apartment to be sure I hadn't left anything behind except the keys to the apartment, the tracking devices from Ranger, and the letter for whichever guy came looking for me first. I knew he'd tell the other one in an effort to find me, or at least to figure out why I'd left. I got in my car and pulled away from the apartment building, feeling a little emotional knowing that I wouldn't be back there again. Someone else would move into my apartment with its crappy bathroom and penchant for burglaries and firebombs. Shithole it might be, but it had been my shithole.

I had one more stop to make on my way out of town: my parents' house. It was just after midnight as I quietly slipped inside with Rex's cage and the letter I was leaving behind. I placed the cage on the kitchen counter and propped the letter up in front of it. I reached inside the cage and gave Rex a small rub.

"I'm sorry I can't take you, buddy," I said, trying not to break down. "Hopefully I'll see you again. I don't know if you'll stay here or if Valerie will let you come live with her, but if you do, don't bite the little girls, okay? They just want to have fun with you."

I put the lid back on the hamster cage and left the house as quietly as I had entered. The last thing to ditch was my cell phone. I'd spent too much money on the phone to justify throwing it away, so I headed back to my storage unit. It was filled to bursting and I prayed that things didn't fly out of it like a cartoon as I opened the door. Thankfully, nothing fell out and crushed me. I turned off my cell phone and put it on top of a box before pulling the door shut on my life in Trenton.

 **October 9** **th** **—5 a.m.—Ranger's POV**

I woke up on Thursday morning feeling like something was off. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something wasn't right in my world.

I showered and dressed before heading down to my office on the fifth floor. Reports from the night shift were on my desk and I immediately scanned them. Only eight alarms had gone off overnight. Two had been clients who had recently changed their passcodes and forgotten them, one had been a wiring problem, and one had been a teenager sneaking back into the house after a night on the town. The others had been attempted break-ins that were thwarted immediately or the would-be burglars had fled as soon as the alarm had gone off. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened since I'd left the control room the night before. I checked my cell phone and office phone. No messages or missed calls on either. I checked my email. Three emails regarding new contracts and several regarding company business, but nothing emergent or that threatened the integrity of the company. I checked on Stephanie's trackers, all of which were at her apartment. I went to check on her cell phone, but realized the GPS wasn't responding. That meant her phone was destroyed, dead, or shut off. I tried calling it, just in case it was a glitch, but it went straight to voicemail. Feeling uneasy, I went down to my car and drove to her apartment.

The first thing I noticed was that her latest car wasn't in the lot, even though the tracker had said otherwise. Not unusual, as she often spent the night with Morelli, but I'd noticed she hadn't spent the night at his house since returning home from Hawaii. Stephanie was rarely out of bed before seven, so I doubted she was out running an errand. Things had been strained between all of us since the fight. I knew Stephanie was confused about what she felt for Morelli and me, and neither of us helped the situation. Morelli's commitment to Stephanie had the strength of dental floss while the ties that bound me to her were invisible. What that implied about their strength could be left up to interpretation. I took the stairs up to the second floor and let myself into her apartment with the key I'd had made after we'd put in her latest set of locks. Stephanie still believed that I used lock-picking tools to get into her apartment, and I let her continue to think so for sheer enjoyment. Her naiveté often brightened my day.

I stood in shock for a few moments while I stared around the living room. I pulled my gun out of the holster and began checking the apartment room by room. Everything was gone. Other than the appliances, the only things in the apartment were lying on the kitchen counter. I found three small trackers that I'd placed in her bags at various points along with the tracker that had been attached to her car. There were keys to the apartment laying on the counter as well, along with an envelope. There was no name on the envelope, but I quickly opened it and read the letter inside.

 _I'm fine—I'm not in danger, so don't think I've been forced out of here against my will. I chose to leave because I can't stay here and figure things out. I need space to think without people pressuring me. Things have been really confusing for the past four years and they've only gotten more confusing in the past several weeks. Please don't try to find me. I really need to be alone for now. I don't know when I'll be back, but I do think I'll come back someday. I'm sorry to leave things this way, but I knew if I tried to tell you in person, you'd stop me . I want to know that I love you, but I'll understand if you move on with your life._

 _Stephanie_

She'd written the letter knowing that either Morelli or I would find it, so she'd left it vague enough for it to apply to either of us. I read the letter three times while I tried to figure out what I was going to do. I knew I wouldn't be able to rest until I at least knew where she was and that she was safe. I pulled out my cell phone to call Tank, but froze when I heard the apartment door open and shut.

"Steph?"

It was Morelli, who looked like he had thrown on whatever clothes had been nearby. He paused when he found me leaning against the counter, still holding the letter.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked. "Her mother just called me to say Stephanie left Rex and a note at their house, saying that she's leaving town and doesn't know when she's coming back."

"She left one here too," I said, handing him the letter. He scanned it quickly and looked confused.

"What's she talking about? What does she need to figure out?"

Morelli wasn't stupid, so I simply stared at him. I could see a vein start to throb in his forehead, which told me that realization was kicking in. "Who was the letter addressed to?"

"No one specific."

I saw his nostrils flare and he balled one of his hands into a fist while he shook his head. "If her parents found the note this morning, that means she probably left sometime late last night or early this morning," I said, trying to bring him back to the important issue. "She could be a few hundred miles away by now."

Morelli took a minute to compose himself before turning back to face me. "I can't file a missing persons report because she informed people that she was leaving town and there are no signs of distress. I can call in some favors with other places to put a look out on her car, though I don't even know where to start at this point. You'd have better luck doing whatever it is that you do to find people."

"I'll let you know what I find out."

We left the apartment at the same time and walked down to our cars in silence. I had just reached my Turbo when Morelli spoke.

"What really happened between you two in Hawaii?"

I paused in the process of reaching for the door handle and opted to rest my arms on top of the car instead. This wasn't likely to be a pleasant conversation.

"What did she tell you?"

Morelli shook his head. "I want your version."

Should I tell him the truth or lie? I'd suspected Stephanie hadn't told him _everything_ that had happened between us in Hawaii, but considering she had run off and didn't tell anyone where she was going, I didn't figure things could get much worse with the truth. If he pushed for it.

"She called me when she saw the Rug's wife in Hawaii. She couldn't get access to the resort where they were staying, so I flew out and we went in as a married couple to get close to them. We didn't manage to find out where they were staying at the resort and they managed to check out without us knowing. Then you showed up and you know the rest of what happened."

"Did you sleep with her?" Morelli asked impatiently.

"Yes."

"How many times?"

"I didn't keep a tally."

Morelli threw up his hands in frustration. "Why am I even bothering to look for her when she's sleeping with you?"

"My understanding of your relationship is that you both are open to see other people," I reminded him. "I believe I've seen you out with that redheaded nurse from St. Francis on more than one occasion, so I'm not sure what the problem is."

"The problem is _you_ —she can date anyone else that she wants. I just don't want her dating you," he replied as he began to pace agitatedly.

"Are you worried that I'll drag her into something dangerous or illegal?" I asked. "I do my best to keep her out of both types of situations, but she manages to find them all on her own."

"I don't want her seeing you because she's in love with you," Morelli growled. "And you're in love with her, and the only reason she has stayed with me is because you won't commit to an actual relationship with her. And I'm afraid one day that you might change your mind and then I'll lose her."

"I told you what your options were in Hawaii," I replied, remembering the conversation we'd had while waiting outside the hospital for taxis to take us back to the resort.

"I'm not going to kill you, mostly because I don't think I could," he replied. "And I'm not going to marry her while she's still waiting around on you. It's looking like I may not have to worry about either option now. She left town without a word about where she's going, when she'll be back, or why exactly she left."

"We've both spent the past four years confusing the hell out of her, and the fight in Hawaii must have been the final blow," I said.

Morelli continued to pace for a few minutes, muttering under his breath. He knew he was partially to blame for her leaving, though I felt like more of the responsibility laid with me. Our time together in Hawaii had been more than just undercover work and sex. There had been times when it had felt very real and had left me actually considering marriage. And the sex had been the best of my life. I'd laid awake afterwards and watched her sleep, wondering how I had managed to fall in love so deeply, despite my best efforts against it.

"I want to know that she's safe," Morelli said after a few minutes. "Let's each do what we can and compare notes later. I'll talk to her friends and go the legal routes. You do the rest."

Once back at Rangeman, I told Tank to meet me in my office. Even though he was my best friend, I'd never actually told him the details of my complicated relationship with Stephanie until I'd come back from Hawaii with a fracture in my hand and stitches under my eye. He hadn't seemed surprised by any of it, except for the fact that I had once encouraged Stephanie to go back to Morelli. He hadn't said much, but I'd known him long enough to know his expressions, and the one he'd worn during that conversation had said _you're a fucking idiot._

"Stephanie's gone," I told him once he had shut the door. "She ditched her trackers and her cell phone is off. She packed up her apartment and left her hamster with her parents in the middle of the night. She left a note at her apartment saying that she needed space and doesn't know when she'll be back."

"You and Morelli finally scared her off," Tank replied, shaking his head. "I thought that might happen. Stupid sons of bitches."

I glared at him, daring him to comment further, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. "I want her found. Start checking traffic cameras and tolls. See how she got out of Trenton and follow her as far as you can. I'm going to start on her digital footprints."

I started out by checking her bank account. She'd had over $30,000 in the account two weeks earlier, but there were large payments to her credit card accounts and large withdrawals every day since. The account had been closed the day she left town. Based on the calculations, she had over $24,000 cash with her. You could go pretty far and be gone fairly long with that amount of money. She had paid off her credit cards and there hadn't been any activity on them since.

Next, I began running her name through passenger lists for planes, trains, and buses leaving from the tri-state area, but turned up empty. No surprise there. I spent the next hour combing through her email and cell phone usage, but again, nothing stood out. She had been careful when she'd planned this—having worked for me, she knew what I could dig up. And she didn't want to be tracked.

"I've got her on traffic camera crossing into Pennsylvania around twelve-thirty this morning," Tank said, handing me a print out of the camera. It was Stephanie's car as it approached the Route 1 Bridge into Morrisville. "But I lose her after that. I have a feeling she's avoiding major roads with traffic cameras."

"She doesn't want to be tracked," I said quietly. "She's carrying over $20,000 in cash, not using her credit cards, email, or phone to make any plans, and ditched every single tracker. She doesn't want me to find her and come for her."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to find her. Once I do, I'll decide then if I want to respect her space or not."

I sent Morelli a text message telling him to call me once he'd finished his work to compare notes. He called an hour later.

"I've talked to friends, family, and neighbors—no one knew Stephanie had any intentions to leave town," he said. "Connie and Lula said she'd been a little quiet and distracted, but they had chalked it up to stress after Hawaii. Her building super said he found a note this morning slipped under his door that said she would be vacating the apartment at the end of the month. No one saw or heard her moving furniture, but a guy on the first floor said they saw a moving company truck show up around eleven last night, but hadn't paid much attention to it. I called the moving company, who told me that Stephanie had paid extra for movers to come at night and that they moved her furniture and several boxes into a storage facility off of Broad Street. I went to the facility to see what was going on. I couldn't get into the storage unit without a warrant, but the guy working there told me she had paid for an entire year in cash. When he'd asked what she was doing for the next year, she told him she would be travelling."

Stephanie had worked hard to cover her tracks to avoid detection, to the point that she had packed up and moved in the dead of night like the Colts leaving Baltimore. I admired her determination to get out, but it scared me that she was willing to go to those lengths. She hadn't told her friends or family anything, which was another alarming sign. She'd said she wasn't in danger, but could she have been lying? Or worse, what if she was sick? If so, was she leaving to get treatment, or going off to die alone? The thought made me sick to my stomach.

I informed Morelli of what I had learned so far, but that I was planning to dig deeper. He told me he had some friends in nearby state patrols that he could contact. He was going to see if they keep a look out for Stephanie's car in Pennsylvania so that he we could try to keep track of where she was going. He would just ask for phone updates on location only, not that anyone approach her.

After I got off the phone with Morelli, I tasked Tank with searching medical records for any sign of Stephanie having had a recent hospital or doctor visit. The problem was that without insurance, it was going to be difficult to try to track her down. I knew the names of her general practitioner and gynecologist, but beyond that I had no other doctors to pursue. I told Tank to start with the doctors, then go to the hospitals and outpatient clinics. If she'd had any major tests or scans done, those would be the places she would have gone for them. I also told him to check the local pharmacies' records for prescriptions that had been filled. I went into meetings for the remainder of the afternoon and found it difficult to stay focused. There had been many times when I hadn't known where Stephanie was, but I'd also known what was going on in her life during those times and had known where to start looking for her. I had nothing to go on this time.

"She hasn't been to any of the hospitals or outpatients clinics or filled a prescription at any pharmacy in a thirty-mile radius, and the last time she was at either of her doctors was several months ago for routine physicals," Tank told me before he left the office at six that evening. "Anything else you want me to check on before I go?"

I shook my head. "No. We've managed a fairly extensive search in the past twelve hours. I have some favors I can call in to get her tagged in different areas, but I'll wait until tomorrow to set those up. She doesn't want to be found, and she's done a good job of hiding her tracks so far. But it's still early. She might eventually slip up somewhere."

I headed up to my apartment after Tank left and tried to eat the dinner that Ella had left for me. I was normally able to keep myself calm and steady when doing what I needed to do, but Stephanie's leaving had my stomach in knots. I gave up on my dinner and stretched out on my bedroom floor in an attempt to meditate and get a fresh perspective on a way to find Stephanie. The only thing I managed to do was think about the day I had arrived in Hawaii. She had picked me up at the airport and told me about the resort and the Ruguzzis. I had given her a gold wedding band, placed a matching one on my own hand, and promised her the wedding night of her dreams. She had laughed at the suggestion, but later that night had acknowledged that our fake wedding night had been much better than her actual wedding night. She and Dickie had gotten into an argument after their wedding and she'd made him sleep on the couch in their hotel room.

I headed down to the office the next morning and started making calls. I had several people who owed me favors. Some of them were high-ranking officials who could keep me out of jail or extricate me from a hostile country, but instead I was using these favors to find Stephanie. I was able to get a notification flag put on her with the IRS in case she was to get a job somewhere, her name was flagged with a _phone-call only_ notice should she try to take a plane, train or bus, and her passport was going to be monitored in case she tried to leave the country by car. They were my only possibilities as I continued in vain to follow her path as she drove through Pennsylvania. If I couldn't find her, my only hope was that she stayed safe and that she'd get homesick quickly and come back.

But what was I going to do or say when I found her? She'd left because I confused her. I loved her, had crossed legal and moral lines to protect her, and had gotten her into bed every chance she gave me, but she had always hit the emotional wall that I hadn't been prepared to let down at this point in my life. I worked eighty to ninety hours every week, spent at least seven days of the month at other offices, and still struggled with some symptoms of PTSD. She knew about my hypervigilance in public, but that was the least of the problems. She'd never been there on the nights when I'd woken up screaming from my nightmares or when I'd been so paranoid that someone was after me that I hadn't been able to sleep for days on end. In the years since I had started considering the possibility of a deeper relationship with her, I'd worked on those things and they had gotten better. Our ten days in Hawaii had been eye-opening because I hadn't experienced any nightmares or paranoia episodes while there. I'd actually been able to sleep better than I had in years, even better than other times when she'd slept in the same bed with me. Any other time we had shared a bed, something bad had been happening and the stress of the situations had kept me restless and on edge.

There had been one point while we were in Hawaii where I had seriously considered asking her to marry me. We had gone on a scheduled couples' hike up a volcano. Stephanie had been breathless and exhausted by the time we'd reached the top, and I'd done my best not to make fun of her for it. She had taken my cell phone and snapped a picture of us together at the top, telling me "that's what normal couples do". I still had all of the pictures she'd taken during our trip on my phone, so I pulled it out and started going through them. We'd looked happy and relaxed, and if I hadn't known us, I thought I'd believe we were a happily-married couple on vacation in paradise.

I couldn't just find Stephanie and have nothing new for her. Something would have to be different. And while I continued to look for her, I'd try to figure out what I was capable of giving her, hoping that I wasn't too late.

 _ **A/N: The chapter titles are going to refer to how many days Stephanie has been gone at the start of the chapter.**_


	2. 77 days gone

**December 24** **th**

" _Call from Helen Plum_ ," my car's hands-free system informed me. My heart skipped a beat as I hit the button on the screen to answer the call.

"Stephanie left another message this morning to wish us a merry Christmas and to tell us that she's still doing fine," Helen informed me, which was both relieving and disappointing.

"I'll have my office trace the call, but she's probably still calling from that same disposable cell phone that we can't locate," I replied. "But the fact that she's still calling lets us know she's alive."

Helen sighed heavily and I could hear the unmistakable sound of ice clinking in a glass. I doubted it was iced tea. "I wish she would come home. I don't understand why she thought she needed to leave town to figure out her feelings for you and Joseph."

That was the million-dollar question. That, and why she still wasn't home after seventy-seven days.

"I don't know either, but I'm still looking for her," I promised. I'd met with the Plums the day after Stephanie left town and had told them what I'd learned. I'd given them the same promise then, that I'd never stop looking for her.

"I know you are," she replied. "And it shows me that you really love her. Not like _Joseph Morelli_."

She'd said his name with the tone usually reserved for the Antichrist, and I couldn't blame her. Morelli's desire to find Stephanie had slowly diminished after the first couple of weeks. He had become increasingly angry with her, deciding that she couldn't possibly love him if she'd been willing to leave town without even telling him to his face. He'd started spending more time with the redheaded nurse, and right after Thanksgiving, he had informed me that he was done looking for Stephanie. He'd said if I found her to tell her that he'd moved on with his life and he wasn't looking back. I'd been mostly relieved to have him out of the picture, though I could understand Helen's anger. For someone who had claimed to love her so much and had tried to kick my ass for being in a hotel room with her, he'd given up on her quickly. I, on the other hand, wouldn't give up until I either found her or the undertaker put me in the ground.

After I disconnected from Helen, I called the control room to tell them to attempt to track the call from Stephanie. I was headed north on the Turnpike towards Newark to spend Christmas Eve with my family. I had missed Thanksgiving, so missing Christmas wasn't an option unless I wanted an early death. I hadn't been home to see my family since before my time in Hawaii with Stephanie, so they didn't know about her leaving town. For the past few years, I'd been responsible for providing an entertaining Stephanie story, like the time she'd gotten my Porsche crushed by a garbage truck or when she'd captured the skip covered in vaseline. But I didn't have anything entertaining to tell them this time. It wasn't for lack of stories, but lack of desire. I'd noticed myself becoming increasingly depressed as the time passed without Stephanie. And the more depressed I became, the more frequently my nightmares and anxiety reared their ugly heads.

My parents' house was in full chaos mode when I walked in the back door. My younger nieces and nephews were yelling and chasing one another while the older ones were undoubtedly glued to their iPads or phones. My mother, grandmother, and oldest sister Celia were in the kitchen putting the final touches on dinner, which normally made me glad to have made the trip home. Instead, the smell of Grandma Rosa's flan felt like a kick to the stomach when I thought about how much Stephanie would love it. Maybe I should have brought her to meet my family before, even if I hadn't been ready for a relationship at the time. Would she have stuck around to figure out her feelings, or would I have just confused her even more and sent her packing sooner?

"Carlos, _mijo,_ I'm glad you're here," my mother said, pulling me into a tight hug while not touching me with her flour-caked hands. She stepped back and looked me over. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I said, trying to relax my body.

"Liar," she whispered, eyeing me suspiciously. "I'll get it out of you at some point today."

The little kids tackled my legs as I made my way through the dining room and into the living room. They were all talking at once, which meant I understood nothing any of them said. My father, brother Emilio, and brothers-in-law Andres and Tony were sitting in one corner of the living room watching a pre-show for the upcoming football game while my other sisters and sister-in-law sat by the fireplace. They were attempting to have a conversation while they all took turns to tell the children to be quiet. My sister Aurelia's husband John was nowhere to be found. Not much of a loss in my opinion, considering the man never spoke to any of us whenever he was around. My sister Silvia's husband Michael was in a corner of the dining room talking into his cell phone, probably talking to whatever woman he was seeing on the side. Silvia and Michael had an open marriage, which I had always thought was incredibly fucked up, but what did I know.

I took a seat with the rest of the men and made noncommittal comments about the teams playing in the game as I thought about Stephanie. She had called three days after she left, which had been her birthday, to tell her parents that she was fine. She had either called while they were out of the house or used a bypass service that allowed her to go straight to their voicemail. She'd done something similar on Thanksgiving Day. She had either managed to find a phone that didn't have a GPS unit in it or she had disabled it, because there had been no way of locating where the call had come from. She hadn't left any sort of electronic trail at this point. Hotels typically wanted a credit card on file, but she hadn't used one. Either she had talked them into accepting a large cash deposit or inspecting the room before she checked out. Or worst of all, she was sleeping in her car. She hadn't had any credit checks or hits on her social security number or driver's license. She was completely off the grid.

I did my best to fly under the radar at dinner, hoping to avoid conversation about what I'd been doing for the last few months and the demands for an entertaining story about Stephanie's job, but my family was too nosy for that to last very long.

"Why weren't you here for Thanksgiving?" my sister Sofia asked me.

"I had to work."

"All you ever do is work," Celia said. "But I guess if you didn't, we wouldn't get to hear about all of the hilarious things that happen to Stephanie. Tell us what's happened since you were here this summer. Any lions show up? Polar bears? Did she have to bring in a magician who kept pulling a disappearing act on her?"

The rest of the table laughed, but I didn't even have the energy to try to smile. "I don't have anything to tell."

"What?" Sofia asked, looking stunned. "I thought there was always something ridiculous happening to her. Did she get a new job?"

"I don't want to talk about Stephanie," I replied firmly. Everyone stared at me for a moment and out of my peripheral vision, I saw my mother give a brief shake of her head. Everyone went back to eating their dinner quietly for a few moments before cries from the other room told us that the children's table needed assistance. Sofia took off for the family room, since the majority of the children belonged to her. Aurelia began talking about her job, which was almost guaranteed to put us all to sleep. Not that being an accountant couldn't be interesting, but Aurelia was the world's worst story-teller and focused on the boring details instead of the more interesting big picture.

Tradition in my family dictated that the men would clean up after the meal since the women had spent the entire day making it. My father assigned jobs to each of us, since we all would try to avoid the job of hand-washing the pots and pans, a job that he never seemed to be tasked with doing. One would think that after this many years of cleaning up after Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas dinners that the men in my family would have developed a routine or at least would get better at doing whatever job they'd been assigned, but it had yet to be the case. Someone always managed to break something and it took us at least twice as long to get the job done as it would have had the women been doing it. But we did this out of love, so my mother didn't complain. Much.

Another tradition was that the men would enjoy a cigar out on the back porch after we'd finished our job. All of us except for John anyway, who had thrown up the first time he'd smoked one and had refused to try another. My father appeared out on the porch last with the box hidden inside his jacket.

"Whoa, are those actual Cubans?" Andres asked when my father presented the box for viewing.

"Yes, and if any of you tell my mother about these, I'll put my cigar out in your eye," my father warned. Grandma Rosa had fully supported the U.S. embargo on Cuba, saying it shouldn't be lifted until the Castro regime had been overthrown. One of my cousins, who was a journalist, had gone to Cuba to cover a story and my grandmother had refused to speak to her for a full year afterwards. We all smoked our cigars in silence, taking a much needed break from the noise inside. Once again, my thoughts went back to Stephanie and what she would say if she knew I smoked cigars on occasion. She would often tease me about my healthy habits, even telling me once that we'd never be able to live together because we were so different. I had finished my cigar and was about to head back into the insanity when my mother appeared on the porch. She wore a black wool coat over her tan slacks and green blouse.

"Carlos, stay here. I want to talk to you," she said, beckoning for the rest of the men to go inside.

"Uh oh," Emilio said, slapping me on the back as he passed. "Someone's in trouble."

My father smacked Emilio on the back of the head before everyone disappeared into the mudroom. My mother took a seat in one of the patio chairs and patted the seat of the one next to her. I sat down and got comfortable, knowing that my mother wouldn't let me go back into the warmth until she'd dragged the truth out of me. In fact, I was almost certain that she was hoping that by talking to me in the twenty degree weather that I would open up faster out of desperation to get back indoors.

"Now, tell me what's wrong," she said. "And if you say nothing is wrong one more time, I'm going to smack you."

I knew there was no point in trying to lie or get out of telling her. My unwillingness to discuss Stephanie had made it perfectly clear that she was the issue. I hadn't had to say anything to my family for them to know that I was in love with her. The fact that I even mentioned her existence was admission enough . Telling them her name had made us practically engaged.

"Stephanie left town back in October, and I have no idea where she is. She didn't tell anyone she was leaving or where she was going. She packed up her apartment, put everything in storage, and left notes saying she didn't know when she'd be back. She even left her hamster with her parents. She's called her mother's house three times and left voicemails to say that she is fine, but doesn't say where she is. I've tried tracking her down, but she isn't leaving any sort of electronic trail," I said, not looking at my mother, but out over the small backyard.

"Did she say why she left?" my mother asked quietly.

I didn't say anything for a moment, trying to figure out how much and what I wanted to say. My family knew very little about the professional or personal parts of my life that didn't pertain to them, though not for lacking of trying on their parts.

"She's said she's trying to figure out her feelings for me and the guy she's been dating off-and-on, and that she can't do it with us around."

"Do you believe that?"

I looked over at my mother for the first time since we'd started talking. "Why wouldn't I?"

She shrugged. "All of this seems drastic for someone who is just trying to figure out her feelings."

But not for someone who had had her cars destroyed, her apartment broken into, and maniacal stalkers out to kill her on a semi-regular basis.

"I had wondered if she might be sick, but so far I haven't discovered anything that would point me in that direction," I admitted. "I also didn't find anything that would make me think she was in danger, so I'm inclined to believe her. But something happened before she left, so I think that was the final straw."

My mother said nothing, but continued to stare at me, waiting for me to elaborate further. I sighed and shook my head. I felt fourteen again.

"She left for a two week vacation in Hawaii at the end of August," I said. "She had just gotten there when she spotted the wife of a skip I was after. She attempted to follow them, but found them holed up at a resort that was for married couples only. She called me, I went out to Hawaii, and we checked in as a married couple to get close to them. They ended up sneaking out before we could get to them, and the guy she was dating showed up. We got into a fight when he found me in the private villa with her and things were uncomfortable for all of us after that."

My mother began massaging her temple. "How long were you there?"

"Ten days."

"And I'm going to assume that you didn't spend all of your time working on trying to catch that man," she said with a disapproving look. "I imagine you spent most of your time engaging in activities that should be reserved for _actual_ married couples."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not exactly a virgin."

"Yes, I became aware of that fact when you called me to say you were getting married to a woman you'd gotten pregnant during a one-night stand," she replied. "What I want to know is why you would put yourself in this position when you know that you're in love with her and she's in love with you, yet you aren't willing to give her a committed relationship. And that isn't even considering the fact that she was in a relationship with another man."

I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. "Mom, please."

"You're in love with this woman," she repeated. "And it's killing you that she's gone and you don't know how to find her. I can see it in you, Carlos. You might be able to hide your feelings from other people, but I'm your mother. I can sense your mood no matter what your face says. You're scared, and not just for her safety. You're worried that she might be out there trying to figure out her feelings and that the results won't fall in your favor. What do you plan to do once you find her? Because you aren't going to be able to go back to the way things were. You have to be able to offer her more."

"What do you want me to say?" I asked, feeling irritated. "Yes, I have been in love with her for a while now, but I've kept my distance because I think she deserves better than me. I was afraid that if I attempted a real relationship with her that I'd end up losing her because she would eventually want to settle into a life that I couldn't give her. Or that she would learn of some of the things I've done and not be able to look at me anymore. It felt different when we were in Hawaii. I could imagine myself having a real relationship with her, and if Morelli hadn't shown up in Hawaii, I don't know exactly what would have happened."

We were quiet for a few minutes while I thought back to the last time I'd seen Stephanie. She'd been wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans, her hair back in a ponytail. I hadn't actually spoken to her, but had seen her walking out of _Pino's_ carrying a take-out bag as I'd been riding down the road with Tank. We'd been on our way to a break-in at a major account, so I hadn't asked him to stop the car so that I could talk to her. She had looked sad, which I had attributed to the tension in her relationships at the time. I'd had no idea that she was likely thinking about everything she would miss when she left home and worrying about getting out of town without being caught. I couldn't help but wonder if things would have been different if I had stopped. Would I have been suspicious and kept a closer eye on her? Could I have found out about her plans before she left and tried to stop her or follow her?

"I know there's nothing I can do to help you," my mother said. "But I'm glad you told me. You never open up about what's going on in your life. I always have to guess. You can talk to me anytime, you know that, right? You can come visit any time of year, not just on the days designated as holidays. This is still your home."

I patted my mother's hand and gave it a small squeeze. I knew she meant everything she had just said, and that despite being disappointed or shocked by the things I could tell her, she would hear me out and support me. But I hadn't confided in my mother about my problems since I'd left her home at fourteen. I'd spent too many years resentful that she'd sent me away instead of keeping me home and trying to keep me in line. Once I'd matured enough to realize that she had made the right decision—because I wouldn't have stayed away from my gangbanger friends—too much had happened in my life for me to feel comfortable opening up to her. I wanted to protect her from the painful parts of my past, so I'd kept her shut out. Similarly to the way I'd treated Stephanie.

"Thanks, Mom," I replied before standing up and heading towards the back door.

"Please let me know when you find her," she said, following suit. "And I hope that by the time you do find her, you've worked up the nerve to tell her just what she means to you and that you can offer her the relationship you both deserve."

From my mother's lips to God's ear.


	3. 140 days gone

**February 25** **th**

 _I opened my eyes to realize that I had been restrained by chains hanging from the ceiling above me and another set of chains that were bolted to the floor. I'd been stripped naked and could tell by looking at my chest that I had been badly beaten before I'd passed out._

" _Nice to see you awake."_

 _My head jolted upward and I was suddenly very aware. Stephanie was straddling a chair a few feet in front of me. She was wearing an army green tank top and camouflage pants. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was holding a heavy chain in one hand. We were in a dark, dank room with no windows and only a couple of hanging lights. I recognized the room as the same one I'd been held in while a prisoner of rebel forces in Colombia._

" _Stephanie, why are we here?" I asked her._

" _I'm asking the questions," she replied. "What was it that you saw in me that attracted you? What initially made you want to get me into bed?"_

 _I didn't understand why she was asking me that question when there were so many more important ones to be answered, like where she had been for the past four-and-a-half months and how we managed to end up in Colombia. But I knew that look of determination on her face and that I wasn't going to be able to ask anything until I'd answered her._

" _You're beautiful, determined, and intelligent. That's what I'm attracted to, and I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't. I thought if I got you into bed once that it would satisfy that urge and I could move on with my life. I hadn't expected to fall in love with you."_

 _Stephanie gave a humorless laugh and stood up. "_ You _didn't expect to fall in love with_ me _, huh? What about me? Didn't you consider that I might be falling in love with you?"_

 _She didn't wait for my answer before she hit me across the chest with the chain, sending a shooting pain through my body._

" _No, you didn't stop to consider that," she said, raising her arm back to take another swing. "You didn't think about my feelings, just about getting your rocks off. And even after you fell in love with me, you kept yourself inaccessible. You didn't want me to see the real you, you bastard." She began hitting me repeatedly with the chain until blood poured from my chest._

" _That's what you deserve," she replied coldly as she walked out of the room. "You deserve to hurt because all you've done is torture me for the past four years."_

The sound of my alarm disrupted my dream. It was still dark outside and I could feel cold sweat on my skin. My hands were tightened into fists, gripping the sheets on my bed. I made myself get out of bed and into the shower in an effort to forget the nightmare.

Since Stephanie had been gone, I'd been bombarded with more feelings than I could process. Worry was at the top of the list, especially after talking to my mother at Christmas. She'd had a point about how drastic it had been for someone to pack away their entire life and leave everyone they loved behind with little explanation just because they were conflicted over feelings for two people. That brought me back around to thinking that there was more to it than that. My biggest concerns were either that Stephanie was seriously ill or that someone from my past had gotten to her. Both scenarios led to the fear that I wouldn't find her alive.

Stephanie's habit of calling home on important holidays had set a precedent, so her mother had expected a call on New Year's Day. A call that never came. I'd told Helen not to worry, that Stephanie may not have considered the need to call that day because she'd just called at Christmas. I had been sure Stephanie would call on her mother's birthday in early February, but I'd been wrong. I'd had my best technical people attempting to track the phone Stephanie used after she'd called at Christmas, but it had been a fruitless effort. And as the weeks passed by with no word from her, I began to grow more concerned. I had begun spending my evenings working out of my apartment's office, constantly checking for signs of communication with anyone in her life. I constantly checked her credit cards and email. I checked her cell phone account until the phone had been turned off due to lack of payment. There hadn't been any usage on the account since the day she left. On one of the coldest nights in February, I'd broken into her storage unit and searched through her belongings, hoping in vain to find something that would tell me where she was. What I'd learned was that she had taken all of the clothing she owned with her except for a few pieces that were either formal or things she hadn't worn in the entire time I'd known her. She had also taken her computer with her, which was unfortunate. I could have used it to check her internet history, which she undoubtedly knew. She had good instincts and better skills than I'd expected.

As February drew to a close, I could tell that Tank had become less optimistic about finding Stephanie. Not that he said anything, but it showed in his demeanor when I'd talk about her. It became more evident as to why when he showed up at my apartment late one evening. Despite being a friend and even having a key, Tank never invaded my personal space.

"What is it?" I asked when I found him standing at my door. I knew it had to be bad if he was coming to the apartment at ten in the evening.

He didn't wait for an invitation, but stepped around me and walked into the apartment. I followed him to the living room where he waited for me to join him. His mood was somber, which filled me with dread.

"A couple of weeks ago, I decided to start checking out hospitals and morgues for any Jane Does that matched Stephanie's description. There were a couple of women that had matched her basic physical description, but I'd sent her fingerprints to the MEs and they'd ruled her out, so I didn't want to say anything to you about it. But a woman turned up dead in out in a small town in Utah last week that matches Stephanie's description. They apparently have a serial killer out there who is cutting off the hands and pulling the teeth of the women he kills so that it's more difficult to identify them. They'd been better able to identify most of the women by consulting missing person reports, but this woman isn't showing up on any. I spoke to the ME and asked if he could send us a picture of the woman so we could see if it was Stephanie, but he refused. He said it's disrespectful to the dead and they can't risk it getting leaked to the media. He said an identification needs to be made in person."

"How close of a physical match is she?" I asked. I couldn't let myself think about anything but the facts at hand. I couldn't consider the possibility that it might be her, that someone might have taken her life.

"Same height, same approximate weight and age. Caucasian, blue eyes, curly brown hair, shoulder length. No tattoos. One piercing in each ear. Close enough to concern me," Tank said. "There's a flight out of Philly at six in the morning that will take you to Salt Lake City. From there, it's a two-and-a-half-hour drive to the town where the body is."

I nodded absentmindedly. "Keep a lid on this until I can go out there to check it out. I don't want her family to know in case it turns out not to be her."

He nodded and headed towards the door, but paused before leaving. "Do you want me to come with you?"

I shook my head. "It's something I need to do alone."

I spent the rest of the night attempting to access information about the woman that had been found, but the skills needed to hack the FBI without getting caught were beyond my abilities. I attempted to contact a man I knew within the FBI, but his office extension said he was on vacation for the next two weeks and his cell phone had gone straight to voicemail. I ultimately called the Special-Agent-in-Charge, a woman by the name of Grace Olinger, to inform her that I would be coming out to determine if the body was Stephanie's. She told me to call her when I was leaving the Salt Lake City airport and that an agent would meet me at the morgue.

 _I was standing outside Stephanie's apartment building and thrill shot through me at the sight of a light on in her apartment. I hurried through the building and burst through her door. There was a man lying on the floor, looking battered and weak. He knew where Stephanie was. That was what my gut was telling me._

" _Where is she?" I asked the man, but he didn't answer. He just continued to moan from where he laid on the floor. I kicked him in the gut, making him cry out in pain._

" _Where is she? Tell me now, or I'll make you wish you were dead."_

 _The man just continued to groan, so I kicked him again and again before bending down to start breaking his fingers. Through it all, I couldn't see his face. He kept it buried in the carpet, which partially muffled his moans._

" _WHERE THE HELL IS SHE?!" I yelled as I began punching the man in the head. "Tell me where she is, you son of a bitch!"_

 _The sound of a ringing phone distracted me for a minute and I looked around the empty room, but didn't see any phone. I turned back to the man to search him for a cell phone when I felt like all of the air had been knocked out of me. Lying on the ground was Stephanie, bleeding from the head with a clearly broken nose, cuts on her right cheek, and a swollen eye. She was curled up in the fetal position, clutching her abdomen._

" _Stephanie," I said breathlessly as I stroked her head. "Babe, I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else."_

" _It's okay," she whispered weakly. "This still doesn't hurt as much as what you've already put me through."_

I jolted awake with the realization that I'd fallen asleep at my desk and the ringing I'd been hearing was the phone on my desk. It was Tank, calling to see if I was ready to leave.

The sun had yet to rise as we rode in silence to the Philadelphia airport. I was locked down, not allowing myself to feel anything but detached numbness. I couldn't let myself feel because it would cloud my judgment. It might not be her. There had to be thousands of women who could match Stephanie's description in the United States. In my gut, I'd felt that Stephanie wouldn't venture away from the east coast and what she knew, but if she'd suspected that I might believe that notion, she could have gone somewhere completely different. Utah would have been one of the last places I would have considered as an escape for her, but it would have been a smart move on her end. Lots of small towns in isolated areas where she could lose herself.

"What are you going to do if it turns out to be her?" Tank asked me as we pulled up to the drop-off zone at the airport.

"I'll call her family to tell them," I said. "And I'll make sure her body gets back home."

"And what about you? Am I going to have to come out to Utah to identify your body if she's dead?"

"No," I told him as I opened my door. "I always keep my ID on me."

I spent the nearly five hour plane ride studying Utah and everything I could find about the serial killer. Little official information had been published, but a couple of Salt Lake City newspapers had speculated based on the seven bodies that had been found over the past four months. Only four of the women had been identified at this point, but all had met the same physical description. Stephanie's description.

But I couldn't let myself think about that. The odds that it wasn't Stephanie were in my favor. I had to focus on that instead of the bone-chilling, gut-wrenching fear that kept threatening to emerge otherwise.

The plane landed in Salt Lake City just after nine local time. I found the rental car that had been reserved for me and headed southwest towards the town of Cade. I hadn't been to Utah since my days in Ranger school, when we'd been brought there for a five-day training exercise. It was one of those places that was beautiful no matter what season, and a place where I could imagine spending time away with Stephanie. As long as there was a Dunkin Donuts nearby, she would be happy to go anywhere. Maybe I would bring her here someday. I just hoped that there was a _someday_ ahead of us.

The drive to Cade felt like torture in slow-motion. I didn't mind driving long distances, but this was excruciating, even when I was doing twenty miles over the speed limit. I was managing to keep it together, but just barely. The breakfast I had choked down on the plane sat like lead in my stomach, and was constantly on the verge of leaving my body. I hadn't felt this much panic since the day I'd been looking for Stephanie after she'd been kidnapped by Constantine Stiva, particularly in the moment when I opened a cupboard and found her stuffed inside. When I'd reached for her, I'd presumed that I was pulling out her dead body. It had been heart-stopping, soul-ripping pain for a second before I had realized that she was alive. I was currently feeling that same pain, and had been for the past twelve hours. I wasn't going to be able to tolerate much more.

The town of Cade had just over two thousand people and one stoplight. I'd been given directions to go to the funeral home, which held the morgue in an adjoining building. The medical examiner and an agent by the name of Bruce Laments were waiting there for me. I parked at the curb and walked up to the one-story brick building. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears and was aware of the heavy weight in my stomach. This was it, the moment of truth. I steeled myself and reined in my feelings before I opened the door to the small waiting area. An older man in blue scrubs was talking to a thin, balding man with glasses who wore a gray suit and black tie.

"Mr. Manoso?" the balding man asked. I nodded. "I'm Bruce Laments, FBI. Thank you for coming in. I know it wasn't convenient, but we didn't want to risk a photo of a dead woman getting leaked to the media before we can figure out who she is."

"I understand," I replied.

The medical examiner, whose name was Dr. Borrows, indicated that we should follow him. He led us to a small room with two metal tables, one of which held a body covered in a white sheet. Borrows was talking, but I couldn't hear him. All I could do was focus on the knowledge that this body could possibly be Stephanie's. As much as I had tried to convince myself otherwise, I was now facing the very real potential. I walked up to the table and stood next to it while I waited for the doctor to pull back the sheet. He eventually gave up on whatever he was saying because he walked around to the other side and pulled the sheet back to reveal the woman's face.

Her brown hair was fanned out around her head, the curls caked with blood. Her face had numerous cuts and bruises from whatever battle she'd fought in her last moments alive. Her nose was clearly broken. I had a sudden flashback to the nightmare I'd had earlier in the day and the image of Stephanie lying on her apartment floor after I had unknowingly beaten her, telling me that it was nothing compared to the emotional pain I'd already inflicted. I forced myself to come back to the moment and took a deep breath before I spoke.

"It isn't her," I said, surprised that my voice had stayed even. "This isn't Stephanie Plum."

Dr. Borrows nodded and replaced the sheet. "Thank you, Mr. Manoso. Good luck locating your friend."

I was five miles outside of Cade before I had to pull over on the side of the highway. I got out of the car and walked around to the other side, breathing in the cold winter air in an effort to calm myself down. The cold air made my lungs hurt, and I only managed thirty seconds before I lost my breakfast on the side of the road. After heaving up everything I'd ingested in the last few hours, I gasped for air and looked out across the desert, trying not to completely fall apart. The terror that had been threatening to grip me since Tank had come up to my apartment the night before was coming out in sobs of relief. It hadn't been her. I could assume she was still alive at this point. I wiped my eyes and nose after a minute, thankful for the quiet stretch of road, and got back in the car. I rinsed my mouth with the bottle of water from the car and took another minute to compose myself before pulling away from the curb. I gave myself ten minutes to get my heart rate and breathing back to normal before I called Tank to give him the news. I could hear the relief in his voice when he said he was glad to hear that it wasn't her. He also informed me that a big snow storm was coming through, so all flights out of Salt Lake City were cancelled until at least the next day. He said he would get me set up in a hotel and text me the information.

The drive back seemed much shorter, likely because I now allowed myself to get lost in my thoughts and feelings about the whole thing. I was relieved that it hadn't been Stephanie, but underneath my relief was anger. How could she do this? Did she realize the agony we were in? Probably not, considering she hadn't bothered to speak to anyone directly since October. She had no idea that Morelli had moved on or that I'd just travelled two thousand miles to identify what I had thought might be her body. She didn't know that her mother's drinking had reached such a critical point that she'd had to go into rehab. Morelli had been right about one thing—Stephanie had been incredibly selfish when she'd made her decision to leave.

Once I'd gotten settled into the hotel room Tank had secured for me, I laid down on my bed and tried to put my anger with Stephanie aside. It wasn't productive to be angry with her. It would only interfere in my ability to find her. Her absence in the past four months had opened my eyes to her importance in my life. Not that I hadn't already known she was important to me, but the depths of my feelings for her and how much I depended on her for those little moments of humanity were now more obvious than ever. I knew that once I found her, I wasn't going to let her go without one hell of a fight. I couldn't promise her that I would be perfect or everything she would ever want me to be, but I was going to stop fighting it and give her all that I could.

While I was perusing the room service menu, my cell phone rang and the display told it was my mother. She had called me every week since Christmas to check up on me. She would ask how I was doing and if I'd heard from Stephanie. I decided to answer the call, figuring that to ignore it would only makes things worse for me later.

"Ricardo Carlos Manoso, I cannot believe you went out there alone!" my mother shrieked when I answered the phone. "What if that had been Stephanie? You would have been there all alone."

"How do you even know about this? Did you call the office?"

"I called your office after not being able to get through to your phone and was transferred to Pierre," she said, and I suppressed a laugh at Tank's misfortune in being named Pierre. "He told me you were out of town. I pushed him for information and he told me that you'd gone out to Utah to identify a woman's body whose description greatly resembled Stephanie. He said he'd let me know once he heard from you. He had left a voicemail for me that I just got while on my break, telling me that it wasn't her."

The government was wasting its money with Guantanamo Bay. Just send those suspects to Lola Manoso in Newark. She'd squeeze every ounce of information out of them in no time. Even big, badass Tank was reduced to little Pierre Montgomery when facing her.

"It was something I had to do alone, Mom," I replied. "I would have managed it if it had been her, which it wasn't."

"Bullshit," my mother said, which nearly knocked me off the bed. I'd never heard her swear before. "If it had been her, I would have been getting a call from Pierre, telling me that you'd put a bullet in your brain after finding out that Stephanie was dead. Don't try to act like this wasn't killing you until you knew for sure that it wasn't her."

I was quiet for a minute, not sure that I could open my mouth and speak normally. The worry and anger in my mother's voice reflected my own worry and anger with Stephanie. Apparently she wasn't the only one being selfish.

"I kept it together until I was about five miles out of town after confirming that it wasn't her," I said quietly. "I had to stop for a few minutes to pull myself together. I'd been terrified that it was going to be her, since we haven't heard anything from her since Christmas, and I was overwhelmed when it turned out to not be her. I couldn't breathe, I got sick, and I sat on the side of the road and cried. Is that what you want to hear?"

"Yes," she said with sniffle. "I want to hear you admit that you're human. That you love this woman more than life itself and that the idea of losing her is unbearable. More importantly, I want you to be able to say these things to her. To let her know how much you love her and how hurt you've been in her absence."

Talking to my mother was working up feelings inside me that I didn't want to revisit in the moment. If I cried once more today, I was going to have to turn in my balls. "It's all done now, Mom, but if I have to do this again, I won't go alone."

We talked about my plans to return to Jersey for a few minutes before hanging up. I tossed the room service menu aside, my appetite gone. I channel surfed and found a basketball game to lose myself in for a while. I wasn't sure how to move forward after this, but I knew I couldn't bring along the baggage. Stephanie had asked for her space, she had said she needed time to think, and nothing had indicated to me that she was in danger. She was a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions and taking care of herself. As I turned off the television and attempted sleep for the night, I decided that I was going to keep an eye on her electronic trail, but that I was going to ease up on the pressure I'd been putting on myself. She wouldn't be able to stay off the grid forever, and one day I would find her.


	4. 197 days gone

**April 23rd**

Another two months passed without word from Stephanie, though there had been a couple of instances where someone had called her parents' number, but had hung up when they'd answered. I'd suspected that it had been Stephanie, which had felt like a move in the right direction. If she was getting to the point of calling the house without the bypass service, it meant she was getting homesick and lonely. It made me more confident that she would eventually leave an electronic trail or would show up one day. I went to church on Easter Sunday and prayed for word from Stephanie. I needed to find her, not just for my sake, but for everyone who cared about her. And for her own sake . I knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't be happy being alone in the world for too long. God must have heard me, because three days later, I got a call from my contact at the IRS.

"I got a hit on Stephanie Plum," Jack Early told me when I took his call. "A bed and breakfast up in Newport, Vermont just filed their first quarter taxes and she was listed as employed there since January second and was still employed as of the end of March."

I resisted the urge to jump up and shout, opting to take a deep breath instead. "Tell me where this place is."

After getting the name and address of the business, I immediately began a run on it to get the background. It was an all-season resort that employed sixty people and could host up to eighty guests. It was positioned on a large lake and was located in a small town only a few miles from the border with Quebec. I managed to book a flight out of Newark to Burlington that left at eleven, but would have to drive two hours from there. I packed a carry-on suitcase, booked a rental car, and was on my way to the airport in under an hour. While I was on the road, I called Silvio and had him start searching for anything he could find on Stephanie in Vermont.

"What the hell is she doing in Vermont?" Tank pondered as we drove up the Turnpike. "What is there to do up there besides ski and make maple syrup?"

"She chose a good place to hide out," I acknowledged. "Vermont isn't high on the list of places I would have thought to look. And she chose a small town. Less exposure."

It was just after noon when I arrived in Burlington and I was on the road to Newport by one. The drive across the state was peaceful as I thought about what I would say when I saw Stephanie. I couldn't decide if I should chew her out or kiss her first. Maybe I could do both at the same time. The first real lead on Stephanie in over six months had sent more of a thrill through me than the first time she'd left a voicemail with her family.

The _McCallister Bed & Breakfast_ consisted of three separate buildings that sat on the shore of Lake Memphremagog. I parked and walked up to the largest building, where signs indicated the check-in desk was held. A young blonde woman was working at the front desk, completing the check-in process for a young couple that couldn't keep their hands off each other. Newlyweds, or possibly people having an extramarital affair. It could be hard to distinguish the two.

"Welcome to the McCallister Bed & Breakfast," the blonde said once I reached the desk. "Do you have a reservation?"

"I'm looking for someone that works here," I told her. "Stephanie Plum."

The next thing I was aware of was sitting in my rental car in the dark. The glowing clock on the radio told me it was a quarter after ten, and to my surprise, I was parked in the driveway behind my parents' house. I hadn't intended to drive the nearly four hundred miles from Newport to Newark, but I'd done so without being aware of it. I'd always prided myself on my ability to stay focused and level-headed in tough situations, but nothing had prepared me for what had happened in Vermont. I got out of my car and walked up to the house, knocking on the back door. I could see a glimmer of light still on in the downstairs, and a second later, the porch light turned on and I could see my mother looking through the glass.

"Carlos," she said, looking as stunned to see me as I was to be there. "What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"

I walked past her into the kitchen and went through to the living room. My grandmother and father were both early risers, so they were both already in bed. My mother was a night owl and tended to stay up well past midnight, even on the nights when she wasn't working at the hospital. I sat down on the couch and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. My mother took a seat next to me and put a hand on my back.

"Carlos, you're scaring me. What's wrong?"

"I got word on Stephanie today," I told her, sitting up. "I had called in a favor with someone at the IRS to keep tabs in case she got a job somewhere or filed her taxes. He called me this morning to say that a bed and breakfast in Vermont had paid their first quarter taxes and that she'd been listed on the payroll. I flew up to Vermont but when I asked about her at the hotel, I was told that she had quit last week. I pushed for more information and the manager told me that she had mentioned wanting to be back in New Jersey before Memorial Day."

I swallowed hard and looked over at her as I continued. "She's pregnant, and her due date is on Memorial Day—May twenty-sixth."

My mother looked nearly as shocked as I had felt when I'd received the news. "Oh, Carlos. Do you think it's yours?"

I shrugged. "The timing makes me think it's a possibility. The fact that she left town without a word to anyone about being pregnant makes me think it's probable. If it had been Morelli's, I think she would have told him."

My mother left the room for a moment and returned a minute later with a beer and a small day planner. She handed me the beer and sat back down, flipping through her planner. I could see her counting weeks backwards, going back into the previous year.

"Due dates are based on the first day of a woman's last menstrual period," she said after a few seconds. "Given Stephanie's due date and assuming it hasn't changed any, I can assume her last period started on the eighteenth of August. Do you know if her cycles are regular?"

I had just taken my sip of beer and choked on it slightly. I wouldn't have expected to be discussing Stephanie's period with my mother any more than I would have expected an alien landing on my roof. Despite Stephanie's assertions that I knew everything about her, I didn't actually know as much as she thought.

Or did I?

"When she first left town, I went through her medical records and I did read the report from her latest visit to her gynecologist. The doctor had written that she had a twenty-eight-day cycle and that nothing abnormal had been reported," I said, feeling a little embarrassed.

"That's good to know," my mother said distractedly, consulting her calendar once again. "When were you with her in Hawaii?"

"She left for Hawaii on the twenty-sixth and I got there the twenty-eighth," I said. "We left on the sixth of September."

"And she only slept with you during that time period?"

I grimaced. "I can't swear that she didn't sleep with Morelli the day she left, but from at least the twenty-seventh through the sixth, she hadn't been with him. We were together once more on the eighth. That was the last time. I don't know when she might have been with Morelli before or after Hawaii."

"How many of those days did you have sex with her? Did you two use birth control?"

"Geez, Mom," I said, taking a long swig of my beer.

"They're reasonable questions," she replied.

"We had sex every day we were there, and we used condoms each time," I admitted. "Except for twice. Once while we were in Hawaii and then on the eighth."

My mother sighed as she closed her day planner. "Well then, based on that timeline, frequency, and a lapse in the birth control, I would say it is very likely that you fathered this baby," she replied. "Even if she were with this Morelli the day she left and the day she came home, it was likely too far outside the fertility window for him to be the father."

I finished the rest of my beer in silence while I processed everything. Stephanie was pregnant with what was almost certainly my baby, and instead of telling me this, she'd run away. She had known for at least two weeks before leaving Trenton, since that was how long she had taken to plan her escape. I had spoken to her twice in that time period, and she hadn't taken the opportunity either time to tell me that I was going to be a father.

"What are you going to do?" my mother asked, and I could tell there was an edge to her voice. "You have more to consider now than just whether or not you want a relationship with Stephanie. You have to decide if you're going to raise your child."

"I already planned to tell her that I want a relationship," I said. "I'd decided that before I knew about her pregnancy."

That was all I had thought about as I'd driven away from Newport. I'd asked myself multiple times if I was capable of being a father to this baby. Maybe Stephanie hadn't thought I could do it, and that was why she'd left town. But the idea of having a child out in the world that I'd never seen made me sick. It had been hard enough to step back and let Ron do the job I should have done for Julie. I couldn't imagine living in a world where I had a child with the woman I love and not being part of its life. I couldn't imagine not having Stephanie in mine. I wasn't sure what kind of father I could be, but I knew it would be different with this baby. If I could ever find Stephanie. What had been her plan after the baby was born? Was she going to continue living off the grid and hiding from everyone? Would she have come back? A thought hit me like a kick in the gut: was she planning to give the baby up for adoption? I couldn't let myself think that way. It paralleled with thinking about the possibility that Stephanie had been dead back in February. It wasn't productive.

"I hope you plan to stick to that decision and to support her and raise that child with her," she replied. "Because of everything we've been through, the thing that disappointed me the most was when you gave up your rights to Julie."

I whipped my head around to stare at my mother. "What do you mean?"

My mother had tears falling down her cheeks and her voice shook as she spoke. "I've always wondered if you walked away from her because you felt like your father and I walked away from you after you got in trouble and we sent you to live in Miami. I know things turned out well for Julie, but I can't bear the thought of you doing that again with Stephanie and this baby. I've seen how much you love her, Carlos, and I've always hoped you would have a family. I want you to know the joy of seeing your child every day and seeing who it turns into. I know you love Julie and would do anything for her, but you don't really know the depth of a parent's love until you've been up with that baby all night, seen it takes its first steps, and heard it call out for you for the first time. That bond with your child doesn't compare to any other relationship you'll ever have. I don't want you to miss out on that again."

Damn, that was what my mother had thought about me and my decision all these years? How could she think that it had been easy for me? I'd struggled with plenty of bouts of guilt over the years. I didn't need her inflicting more on me. But as I watched my mother, I realized this wasn't about my own feelings of guilt. It was about hers.

"Mom," I said, reaching for her hand. "You sent me to Miami because you knew it was the best thing for me. I wouldn't have had the life I have now if you hadn't. If you had kept me here, and _if_ I were still alive, I'd either be in jail or up to no good. You knew there was the chance that I would have felt like you were giving up and walking away from me and could have hated you for it, but you thought it was a risk worth taking. And it was the right decision. It was similar for me with Julie. When she was born, I knew I couldn't give her the kind of life I wanted for her. I was in the Army during war time. I never knew if I was going to make it home alive. Even so, I wasn't in a place emotionally or mentally be a good father to her. When Ron came along and asked to adopt her, I ultimately agreed because I knew that he would be able to give her what I couldn't. I risked being denied access to her and that she might hate me someday for giving up my rights because I wanted something better for her. I wanted her to grow up in a good home with two good parents the way I did. And she has that, so I can never regret my decision."

My mother reached for a tissue to wipe her tears and blow her nose. "But things have never been the same between us since you left. You were so distant when came back home after you graduated high school, and more so after you got out of the Army. Do you realize that is the first time you've come home for a reason other than a funeral or a holiday since you left for the Army?"

"I know," I admitted. "But it isn't your fault, it's mine. It's who I am and the things I've done."

She stared at me for a minute and stopped herself from saying something else. Instead, she patted my hand. "You look exhausted, Carlos, and it's late. Why don't you go up to your old room and sleep for the night?"

I was about to protest, saying I would be fine to drive back to Trenton, but decided to take her up on her offer instead. She needed it, and it wasn't really a sacrifice on my part to make my mother feel loved by sleeping in my old bedroom for one night. Growing up, I'd shared that room with my brother Emilio until I had moved to Miami. When I'd come back for college, I'd had the room to myself for two years until I left for the Army. It hadn't changed much since then. A double bed, a dresser and a desk, all in a dark oak. There was a brown quilt on the bed that matched the curtains on the window.

I kicked off my shoes and stripped down to my boxers before sliding into bed. I checked my phone to see if Silvio had found anything on Stephanie in Vermont. I had an email from him, saying that he'd found a medical record for her with an OB/GYN and he had attached it to the email. I opened the file and read the reports, which showed that Stephanie had been established as a patient in early November when she was twelve weeks pregnant. Ultrasound photos had been attached to the file, along with documentation that both Stephanie and the baby appeared healthy. Stephanie had reported taking over-the-counter prenatal vitamins since learning she was pregnant and had reported significant morning sickness and fatigue until the eleventh week, when symptoms had subsided. She had been to the doctor for monthly check-ups after that, which showed blood pressure checks, urinalysis, weight checks, fundal measurements, and monitoring of the baby's heart rate. More ultrasound photos appeared in her check-up in late January. The doctor's documentation reported that Stephanie was carrying a girl and was still on track for her due date of May twenty-sixth. Both Stephanie and the baby were healthy, though the doctor had recommended that Steph watch her weight, as she had already gained twenty pounds by twenty-four weeks. Starting in late March, she'd began going in for biweekly check-ups. At the last check-up, on April eighteenth, the doctor noted that Stephanie was moving out of state and that she had given Stephanie a copy of her records to take to her new obstetrician. Unfortunately for me, there was no documentation of a referral or where exactly Stephanie had planned to go when she left Vermont.

Knowing that Stephanie was out there alone had been enough to keep me awake nights, but now that I knew she was alone and pregnant, I wondered if I'd be able to sleep at all until I found her. Finding her medical records in Newport hadn't been difficult because her doctor had been the only obstetrician in town. There were likely hundreds of obstetricians in New Jersey, making it almost impossible to track her down, if she had even come back here.

I managed a night of restless sleep before getting up at five the next morning. After dressing, I sent Tank a text message, telling him to have someone come up to Newark to get me and to return my car to the rental company. I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen, so I headed downstairs to join my father and grandmother. I was surprised to see my mother sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee.

"You're not usually up this early on your day off," I commented, accepting a cup from my grandmother.

"I knew you'd be up early, so I wanted to see you off," she replied. "I filled your father and grandmother in on what happened yesterday."

I nodded, not especially looking forward to what either of them had to say. My father hadn't been happy when I'd gotten Rachel pregnant, but maybe the fact that I'd had more of an established relationship—for lack of a better word—with Stephanie would help my case.

"Carlos," he began, and I resisted a groan. "A child is always a blessing, and I welcome another grandchild any day from any of my children, but why can't you get these things in the right order? Why can't you ever be married _before_ you get the woman pregnant?"

"Don't you think that's hypocritical, Dad?" I asked, relaxing in my seat as I watched the show unfold. Both of my parents immediately looked at each other and me before they said anything.

"What do you mean, Carlos? All of your siblings were married before they began having children, as were we," my mother replied, trying to act confused. I adore my mother, but she's a horrible liar.

"When I first got into the security business and was learning my way around background check systems, I practiced by doing backgrounds on my family, since I knew your information already. When I ran a check on you two, I came across your marriage license. You guys always told us that you got married in August of 1971 and then Celia was born in January of 1973, but your marriage license says that you got married in August of 1972. That would mean Mom was about four months' pregnant when you got married. Didn't exactly follow your own advice there."

The look of shock on my parents' faces was well worth the possibility of them being angry with me for running background checks on them. My mother was the first to recover and speak.

"Have you told anyone else about this?" she asked. I shook my head.

"No, I've been holding onto that little piece of information in case I ever needed it."

My father swore in Spanish. "Well, we expect you to keep it to yourself. We never intended for any of you to know. We were young."

"You were twenty-one and twenty-three," I reminded him. "I was also was twenty-one when Rachel got pregnant and you said something along the lines of 'you should have known better'."

"Well, you aren't twenty-one now," my father retorted. "You're thirty-four. You should definitely know better by now."

"Dad, this wasn't a one-night stand. It's a complicated relationship that I've had for four years with a woman I love. I'm hoping that I'll hear from her soon and that we can talk about this. She probably didn't think I'd be open to being a father and it scared her, so she left town to figure things out. But when I find her and talk to her, I'll be telling her that I will be there. All the way. Like you said, I'm not twenty-one anymore. I have a better life that I can offer her and this baby."

My mother let out a cry and came over to hug me. "Oh Carlos, I'm so happy to hear you say that."

My grandmother asked my father what was happening, since we'd been speaking in English the whole time while my mother nearly choked me.

"One of my men was able to find Stephanie's file from her doctor in Vermont," I said once my mother let go of me. "She's been going to the obstetrician regularly since she was twelve weeks and she's had a healthy pregnancy. The baby's a girl and is also healthy."

"Thank God," my mother said, making the sign of the cross. "But how did your man find her medical records?"

"Do you really want an answer to that question?"

She closed her eyes, made the sign of the cross the second time, and returned to her cup of coffee.

"What are you going to do now?" my father asked. "Your mother said Stephanie had told people she was coming back to Jersey. Do you think she'll go back to Trenton?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I think the best thing to do is to have an alert on her name with the major hospital networks and with the health department. If she checks into one of the hospitals in the networks we flag, I'll know as soon as they put it in their system. If she goes somewhere else, then I'll know whenever the birth record is entered for the baby. I hope it doesn't come to that though. I'm hoping she'll come home or leave some sort of trace so that I can track her down before then. I want to be there when she has the baby. I don't want her to go through that alone."

After making multiple promises to keep my family informed of anything I heard, I went out to the driveway, gave Hal the keys to my rental and the necessary information to return it, and got into the front seat of an SUV that was being driven by Tank. A second SUV, driven by Julio Juarez, followed Hal to the rental company.

"Fill me in," he said as we pulled away. "I already read the medical records Silvio found in Vermont, so tell me the rest of it."

I brought Tank up to speed on what happened in Vermont and the very high likelihood that the baby was mine. I couldn't even allow myself to consider that it might be Morelli's, but even if it were, it wouldn't matter. I would still be there for Stephanie and would play whatever role necessary in the life of her child. I called Silvio as well to get the alerts set up with the major network hospitals in New Jersey, which covered about seventy-five percent of the hospitals in the state, and with the health departments in every county.

After showering and changing clothes, I drove to the Plums' house to deliver the news. I wasn't looking forward to their reactions. We had developed a good relationship in the months since Stephanie had been gone, but I wasn't sure how they were going to respond when they learned that she had left because I'd gotten her pregnant.

"I can't believe she's pregnant and didn't tell anyone," Helen said, eyes glazed over in shock. "And then she ran away."

Frank and Edna were looking as stunned as Helen, though they seemed to be processing it differently.

"Well, this is exciting," Edna replied after a moment. "I've always wanted a grandchild that wasn't white. She'll be so cute with your dark eyes and a year-round tan."

Even my impeccable self-control failed in that moment and I rolled my eyes.

"Are you planning to stick around and be responsible for your kid?" Frank asked me, giving me the same look Rachel's father had given me when I'd first met him after getting her pregnant. The look that said 'if you like your life, you'll do the right thing'.

"Yes, I am."

He nodded his approval and went back to watching television. I watched Helen's eyes flip towards the kitchen instinctually, then blink rapidly as she remembered that the liquor wasn't in there anymore. When she looked at me, it was with the same sort of worry that I had seen on my mother's face when I'd told her I had joined the Army.

"Please find her," she said. "Bring our girls home."


	5. 226 days gone

**May 22** **nd** **-Stephanie's POV**

The day the word _pregnant_ had appeared on the little blue stick was the day the complicated life I'd known was over, and an even more complicated new life had begun.

I'd been struggling with my feelings for both Morelli and Ranger even more so than usual. I'd always thought I'd loved both of the men in my life equally, just in different ways, but the time in Hawaii and the weeks since coming back had opened my eyes to the reality. I loved Ranger more than I'd allowed myself to admit, and Morelli's response to finding us together, or rather lack thereof, since we'd returned to Trenton had told me a lot about his feelings for me. Most people would have seen this as a good thing, since it would have allowed me to finally make a choice between them, but since Ranger had made it clear that he wasn't ready for a committed relationship, it had made things worse.

When I found I was pregnant, I had immediately began trying to figure out when it had happened, since it would tell me who the father was. It turned out that trying to determine a date of conception was a little more difficult than I had expected, but the consensus from ten different websites had told me that I'd most likely gotten pregnant by Ranger while in Hawaii. I'd had a momentary sense of relief, followed by overwhelming anxiety. The websites had given me a five-day time frame for fertility, the first day being four days after I'd slept with Morelli on the morning I'd left for Hawaii. The sites had also informed me that sperm could live in the human body for up to five days, so on the chance that there had been a hole in Morelli's condom, his sperm had hung out in my body for five days, and I'd ovulated on the earliest day indicated, he could possibly be the father. The whole situation made my head spin and what I had realized was morning sickness even worse.

My gut instinct said that the baby was Ranger's, and my heart felt pretty good about it since I was sure that I loved him more than Morelli. But my mind was scaring and hurting me. As I laid in bed and thought about the fact that there was a tiny being growing in my uterus, I had gone over in my head what Ranger had told me about his relationship with his daughter Julie.

" _I feel a financial and moral obligation to my daughter. I send child support, I send birthday and Christmas presents, I visit when I'm invited. But I've kept myself emotionally distanced."_

The idea of Ranger taking a similar position in the life of this baby felt like a kick to the gut. I couldn't handle it. I'd rather him not be involved at all than to only give money and visit when I asked. That was when I knew I needed to leave town. If I didn't have him behind me the way I needed him to be, then there was no way I could face my family and Morelli. So I had started preparing my escape, but opted to store my belongings in Trenton while I figured out my long-term plans. I wasn't discounting the possibility of coming back once the baby had been born.

I'd known that if I wanted to stay off the grid that I couldn't settle into a new town right away. B ut I was also painfully aware that I would have to settle down somewhere eventually. I did the responsible thing and read pregnancy books and took prenatal vitamins while I drove around the northeast, looking for just the right place to plant at least temporary roots. I hoped that being away from Morelli and Ranger would help me to clear my head, not only in regards to my feelings for both of them, but to figure out what I was going to do with my future. I couldn't imagine staying on in bond enforcement after having a child since the income wasn't steady, but it had been so long since I'd been in a different job that I wasn't sure what I'd be good at. I'd left town with a substantial amount of cash on hand, but I knew that I would need to get work once I settled somewhere. The money wouldn't last forever, especially when I would have to pay for medical care during my pregnancy. I knew it wasn't smart, but I was relying on time away to help me figure out my next steps, especially as I got closer to giving birth.

I visited every state in the northeast, including Maine, where I knew Ranger had a safe house. Anytime I drove through areas with lakes and woods, I wondered if I was close to it. I had heard about a service that would allow you to contact someone's voicemail directly rather than having to wait for the phone to ring first, so I had used that to contact my family to let them know that I was okay. I hoped it made them worry a little less to hear my voice telling them I was safe, even if it was one-sided. Even though I'd bought an old school flip phone without GPS on Stark Street before leaving town, I'd still expected to see Ranger after every phone call home. When he didn't show up, it had made me wonder if he couldn't find me or didn't want to.

I'd discovered Newport, VT a couple of weeks after leaving, and knew it was the place where I wanted to stay for a while. I'd gotten settled in with an obstetrician, but hadn't stayed in the area initially. I'd continued to travel the northeast until after Christmas, in case Ranger managed to get wind of my appointments with the doctor and came to look for me. But as far as I could tell, he'd never shown up in Newport. Feeling disappointed and heartbroken that he hadn't come for me, I decided to get a job at one of the B&Bs that had a posted a help wanted sign. It was a nice place where the workers did their jobs and went home at the end of the day, not bothering to get too involved in each other's lives. Because the winter season wasn't as busy, I was allowed to live in the hotel until May, when they would start preparing for the busy summer season. By then, I would be in the last few weeks of my pregnancy and would hopefully know what my next move would be.

Being pregnant was an interesting experience. Even though I was dealing with the stress of being alone and my feelings for Ranger and Morelli, I was still able to feel excitement over seeing the ultrasound for the first time and the slow growth of my belly. When the doctor told me the baby was a girl, I had cried. Not just for the relief that I would be better able to relate to the baby as she grew up, but because Ranger wasn't there to share in the moment with me. I'd almost called him that day to tell him, but his speech about obligation and emotional distance had replayed in my head for the umpteenth time and changed my mind. I had known it was stupid, but even while doing my best to avoid detection, I'd been expecting him to find me anyway. As time passed, I noticed that I thought about Morelli less and less and more about Ranger. Wondering what he was doing, if he was still looking for me, if he was safe. I missed Lula and Connie and wondered if Lula was the BEA now that I was gone. I really missed Rex and wished I hadn't left him behind. I could have used the companionship.

As the weeks passed, I grew more anxious about having the baby so far from home. What if there were an emergency? I was beginning to regret my decision to leave more and more as spring progressed. I'd been so desperate a couple of times that I'd actually called my parents' house, but had hung up when they answered. What was I going to say to them, 'Hi Mom, sorry I left without a word, but I'm pregnant and I think Ranger's the father, but he's not going to want to be involved'? I'd been imagining the looks of disappointment on their faces and the amount of alcohol my mother would have consumed if I had gone to tell them when I'd found out. I knew they would have been disappointed and hurt no matter when I told them, but part of me hoped if I could show them their new granddaughter when I saw them again for the first time that some of the disappointment and anger would be alleviated.

I was stunned one day in April when my old college roommate, Jessica, checked into the hotel with her husband. They'd just had their second baby on New Year's Eve and were taking a weekend away for themselves before their anticipated six-week stint in Europe while he served as a guest lecturer at a university in Prague. Even though she was there for quality time with her husband, Jessica took some of it to talk to me and listen to what had been happening in my life. I'd just been telling her about how I was wondering about whether to go back to Jersey before the baby was born when she mentioned that they were going to need someone to house-sit for them while they were in Europe. They would be back the first week of June, after my expected due date, but offered to let me stay for as long as I wanted after they got back in case I wasn't feeling up to going to Trenton right away after giving birth. She even recommended her doctor to me, having just been to her in the past few months. I'd taken it as a sign that I was supposed to go back home and immediately agreed. She and her husband lived in Newark, which was only an hour away from Trenton, so I was close to home without being actually being there. It would give me the option of getting into contact with someone quickly if I wanted. I gave my notice to the hotel, went to my last appointment with my doctor and got a copy of my records before heading back to Jersey. Jessica and her family were leaving for Prague on the twentieth of April, so I arrived the night before to get familiar with the house and any expectations they had. Jessica also had a surprise for me—baby supplies that she no longer had use for, since she'd just had her last baby. I'd become incredibly emotional while pregnant, so the whole situation had kept me in tears for two days.

"Well, Stephanie, you're about a centimeter dilated at this point," Dr. Collins, my obstetrician, told me at the check-up four days before my due date. "You could go into labor at any time or you could still be pregnant next week. It's hard to tell."

"Ugh," I groaned, accepting her hand to sit up on the exam table. "I'm not feeling so great now. My back hurts, my ankles are swollen, and I can't sleep very well. I'm enormous. I've been nervous about this baby coming, but I think I'm ready for her to come out now."

Dr. Collins chuckled. "I understand. I've had four kids myself, and all of them went over their due dates. My oldest went a whole week past. I was ready to cut her out myself."

I felt ice run through my veins. "Do you think I'm going to need a C-section? I don't want to be sliced open."

"No, I don't anticipate that you will," she replied kindly. "But you never know with first time pregnancies or any pregnancy, really. We'll be prepared just in case. So as a reminder, if you go into labor, monitor your contractions and call me when they are consistently five minutes apart for an hour. Call me right away if your water breaks, regardless of contractions. My privileges are at Newark Beth Israel, so you'll go there and go directly to the maternity unit to check-in."

I left my appointment and went home to do another check of the stuff I kept ready in the living room for when I needed to leave for the hospital. I had a bag packed with stuff for the baby and me, along with the carrier part of the car seat. I'd taken my car to a local fire station a couple of weeks before where a hunky fireman had installed the base in the backseat. I felt pretty good about my preparation for my trip to the hospital. It was what I was going to do after we got out that was still giving me heart palpitations. I knew Jessica would let me stay as long as I wanted, but I couldn't avoid reality forever. Plus, I didn't want my baby to be born with no father listed on her birth certificate. I felt I owed her that much.

A severe thunderstorm warning kept disrupting my evening television as I ate leftover pizza for my late night snack. I'd gained forty pounds while pregnant, a little more than what had been recommended, but felt pretty proud of myself for not getting as big as Valerie had while pregnant or developing her love affair with gravy. Jessica had warned me that their electricity had a tendency to go out during storms, so I'd gotten prepared and had candles glowing around the living room, kitchen and bathroom. I was only able to manage one slice of pizza before I had to throw the rest away. I was feeling slightly nauseous, and could only hope it wasn't food poisoning. I could hear the rain pummeling the windows and thunder rumbling outside while lightning lit up the sky as I cleaned up in the kitchen. My back had been hurting pretty badly for the past couple of hours and the Tylenol I'd taken hadn't done much to help it, so intended to spend the rest of the night in the comfortable recliner in the living room.

The first contraction hit me as I was washing my hands at the bathroom sink. It knocked the breath out of me for about twenty seconds. After it passed, I rubbed my belly and took stock of what had just happened. The pain had felt like really bad menstrual cramps, but while uncomfortable, it hadn't lasted long. If this was all labor turned out to be, I thought I'd be able to manage it.

Clearly, I'm an idiot.

Over the next two hours, contractions came and went every ten minutes, increasing in intensity each time. The books on pregnancy said that you should keep walking as much as you could because it would help the baby get into better position for delivery. By the beginning of the third hour, I was doubling over and holding on to whatever sturdy object I could reach with each contraction and tears would sting my eyes. Another, more intense thunderstorm had started to roll through and took out the electricity early on. The candles I'd lit earlier in the evening were still glowing, but the pain and fear I was feeling on top of the dark and the ongoing storm began making me paranoid. What if lightning struck a tree and it fell on the house, trapping me inside while I was in labor? What if I tripped and fell in the dark and knocked myself out or hurt the baby? What if some horrible criminal decided to take advantage of the storm and the lack of electricity to come in the house and rob or hurt me? What if I managed to make it to the hospital, but died giving birth? I began crying as I thought of all the things that could possibly go wrong. I didn't want to do this. I wasn't ready for this.

Unable to stand it anymore, I decided to take a risk and dialed Ranger's number on my cell phone. It rang twice before he answered. The sound of his voice brought tears to my eyes and tightened my throat.

"Ranger," I choked out.

"Stephanie," he said, and I could hear the alertness in his voice. "Where are you? Are you okay? Are you in labor?"

"Yes, I am," I replied. "I—wait, you know I'm pregnant?"

"I found out last month when I went up to Vermont to that hotel you'd been working at," he answered, and I could hear movement in the background. "Where are you?"

"I'm in Newark. I'm staying at a friend's house, but they're in Europe until June, so I'm all alone and I've been in labor for the past three hours," I said, as another contraction hit. "Oh, ow, it hurts."

"Give me the address. I'm leaving my apartment now."

"It's 802 Magnolia Road. It's a brown house with white trim and a lot of trees in the front yard. Be careful, please. The roads are slick from the storm."

"I'm on my way, babe. How far apart are your contractions?"

"About nine minutes. I can't go to the hospital until they are five minutes apart or my water breaks."

"Let me know if anything changes before I get there. I'll be there as soon as I can."

I felt reassured to know that he was coming for me, and that he had apparently continued to look for me, even going to up to Vermont. "I love you, Ranger," I said abruptly.

There was silence for a few seconds, making me unsure if he was still on the phone. "I love you too, Stephanie," he replied before disconnecting.


	6. Day 1 reunited

_Back to Ranger's POV. And just to warn you, I will talk about the birth in detail, but not in an icky way._

 **May 23rd -1 a.m.**

It took an enormous amount of restraint and self-preservation to keep my speedometer only ten miles over the speed limit as I raced up the rain-soaked Turnpike towards Newark. The sound of Stephanie's voice on the phone had jolted me like an adrenaline rush, and I'd been able to get dressed and out the apartment door before wrapping up her call. Hearing her tell me that she loved me—the first time she'd actually said those words to me—had both thrilled and aggravated me. If she loved me so much, then why had she left town? Why hadn't she come to tell me that she was having my child? I took a few cleansing breaths to try to settle myself. As much as I wanted to grill her and shake her and ask her why, I needed to keep it together until after the baby was born. We wouldn't be able to have a productive conversation while she was in labor. Further testing my ability to keep my anger contained was the realization that the address she'd given me was only five miles away from my parents' house. If she had gone straight there after leaving Vermont, it would have meant that I'd been only fifteen minutes away from her on Easter Sunday and then again a few days later after having gone up to Vermont.

Despite the hour, I called the Plum house to let them know that I'd heard from Stephanie. Frank answered the phone with a mumbled swear, but immediately became more alert when I mentioned Stephanie's name.

"You heard from Stephanie?" came Helen's voice. I imagined she must have jerked the phone out of her husband's hand.

"Yes, I'm on my way to her now. She's in Newark. I'll keep you updated, but I wanted to let you know that I'd heard from her. I'm not sure if she'll want to talk to you while she's in labor or if she'll want to wait until after the baby is born."

"Please keep me updated, even if she isn't ready to talk to me yet."

"I will."

The street was dark as I drove towards 802. It looked like the storm had taken out the electricity for half the block. I pulled into the driveway of the brown house with white trim, where Stephanie's green Explorer was parked in the driveway. I climbed out of the car and headed up the walk, where I could see dim light in the window. As I reached the front steps, the door opened and revealed Stephanie. She wore cotton shorts and a blue t-shirt stretch tight over her swollen belly and breasts that were at least one cup-size larger than normal. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, revealing a fuller face and her bright, terrified eyes. I could see tear tracks on her cheeks.

"Ranger, I—," she began, but I put a finger to her lips and pulled her into my arms. It had been eight long months since I'd seen her and held her in my arms. Her hair still smelled the same, and her skin was as soft as ever. I let my anger fade for a few moments while I held her close, though her belly prevented us from being as close as we usually were. I felt her crying before I heard it, her sobs muffled into my shoulder. I nudged her back a few steps so that I could shut the door on the rain that had started up again as I'd gotten out of the car. She straightened up and wiped her tears as she faced me.

"Ranger, I'm so sorry. I know I didn't do the right thing, but I thought it was the right thing at the time," she said, fighting sobs as spoke.

"We don't need to talk about that right now," I told her. "We just need to focus on you having the baby."

Stephanie shook her head. "No, Ranger, I need to talk about this now. What if I die in childbirth and we've never cleared thing up? We need to fix things now. Our baby can't be born with this between us."

She was clearly a mess, and I suspected it wasn't just because of her labor.

"If it will make you feel better," I said. "But let's at least sit down to have the conversation so you can be more comfortable."

Using a flashlight from a nearby table, Stephanie guided me into the living room, where a large, black sectional sofa faced a flat-screen television. A coffee table held a couple of candles that provided some light to the room. She took a seat on the sofa and propped her feet up on the table. She laid her head back and closed her eyes as she rubbed her belly. I sat down next to her and waited while a contraction started. She moaned loudly and I reached out to take one of her hands.

"Try to take slow, deep breaths," I told her as she squeezed my hand, and I was impressed by the grip she managed. She followed my advice and slowed down her breathing, which lessened the grip on my hand slightly.

"They're still at nine minutes apart," she told me as the pain eased. "Did I hurt your hand?"

I gave her a _don't be stupid_ look, which made her laugh. She gave a tearful laugh, but quickly sobered. "I've missed you so much."

"You have no idea, babe," I told her. "At least you knew what was going on. The rest of us were left in the dark."

A tear slipped down her cheek, which she quickly brushed away. "I know. I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

"Why?" I asked, wanting the answer to the question I'd asked myself hundreds of times since she'd left.

"When I first found out I was pregnant, I wasn't completely sure whose baby it was," she admitted. "I did some research about when I might have gotten pregnant, and it seemed likely that it was yours, but there still seemed like a small chance that it might be Morelli's. But the idea of telling either of you was terrifying. I knew Morelli would go through the roof, and all I thought about was what you'd said about Julie a couple of years ago. You said 'I feel a moral and financial obligation to my daughter. I send child support, I send birthday and Christmas presents, I visit when I'm invited. But I keep myself emotionally distanced'. That sounded like torture to me. I wouldn't have been able to handle that kind of arrangement. I decided that I'd rather not have you involved at all than to be told you'd only be around if I asked you to visit. So I left. I figured I'd only come back if the baby ended up being Morelli's. Otherwise, I'd planned to get my stuff out of my storage unit and move away from the east coast to raise the baby and start a new life for us."

I took a couple of minutes to process what she'd said before I spoke again. Part of me felt guilty that she'd carried those words around with her and that they'd been part of the reason she'd left, but part of me was even angrier than ever.

"So you were just going to have my child and never tell me?" I asked quietly, not looking in her direction.

"When I first left, part of me thought I would do that. But I always expected that you'd find me long before now, even though I did what I could do not leave an electronic trail. I figured once you found me, I'd have to tell you the truth and—well, I'm not sure what I thought would happen exactly. Probably that you'd insist on paying child support and seeing her occasion, but that you weren't willing to have a relationship with me or be an active part of her life."

"What changed?"

She shrugged. "I missed you, and I hated the idea of not telling you. I didn't want her to be born without her father's name on her birth certificate. I missed being at home. I missed my family and friends and everything I knew. I was terrified at the idea of raising a child all alone, away from everyone I knew. I'd been thinking about coming back to Jersey to have her when I ran into Jessica and her husband at the hotel in Vermont. I haven't seen her since we'd lived together in college, but I told her about what had happened and she offered to let me stay here while they're in Europe for six weeks. I took it as a sign that I was supposed to come back here. I'd decided that once I had the baby and knew for sure whose she was that I'd get in touch. Even if I didn't end up in a relationship with you, I thought I could live with my parents while I got things figured out."

"Why did you decide to call me tonight? You could have called your mother or one of your friends," I asked, my flash of anger dissipating a little as I realized that logic had started to kick in with her as she'd gotten closer to giving birth.

Stephanie grabbed her purse from the end of the sofa and pulled out an envelope. She handed the envelope to me, which I opened and looked at the contents with the flashlight. Inside were ultrasound photos, though they weren't the usually grainy black-and-white type.

"When I came to the new doctor here, she wanted to do a new ultrasound. This one is the 4-D type, where you can see the baby much better. She did it a couple of weeks ago to be sure that the baby was positioned the right away. When I saw the picture of her face, I knew she was yours. She looks just like you," Stephanie said, indicating the photo I was just pulling to the top. I was pretty sure my heart skipped a beat when I saw the picture of the baby that was currently inside Stephanie. The image was very clear, and showed that she had my eyes and mouth, but Stephanie's nose.

"I wanted to call you," she said quietly while I stared at the picture. "But I was worried that you might have given up on me at this point, so I'd decided to wait until after she was born. I hoped that if I called afterwards, everyone might not be so angry when they got to hold her."

The conversation was halted as another contraction began. This one had been slightly closer, seven minutes. She had breathed through the pain like she had the time before, which seemed to help her a little.

"I don't know what I can say or do to show you how much I regret all of this," she said breathlessly. "I don't know if I've screwed everything up beyond repair, but I do love you. I knew that before I left town. I knew I loved you more than Morelli and that I couldn't have a future with him. Even if the baby had turned out to be his, I wouldn't have been in a relationship with him. When you never showed up in Vermont, I thought you might have given up on me. When I called you tonight, I thought you might not want to talk to me, but you said you'd gone to Vermont to look for me, so it made me realize that maybe you hadn't given up completely. I felt a little hopeful, that maybe even if you don't want to be with me that maybe you would want to be part of the baby's life in a bigger way. We could have joint custody or you could have her one day a week and every other weekend, or whatever you want."

"I had considered several possible reasons for you leaving town, but none of them had included pregnancy," I admitted. "I was shocked. I talked to my mother and she helped me figure out that you'd probably gotten pregnant in Hawaii. Your manager had told me your due date was the twenty-sixth. But even before I found out about the baby, I had decided that once I found you, I would tell you that I wanted a relationship with you. You know what you'd be getting into with me, so it was up to you if you wanted to pursue it. When I found out you were pregnant, it didn't change what I wanted. Even though I've been through hell the last eight months and I'm still angry with you, I still love you and want to be with you. And I want to be a father to our baby."

Stephanie threw her arms around me and cried again. The only good things I could consider from the entire situation were that it had helped us both work out our feelings for one another and that I had missed out on eight months of pregnancy hormones.

We spent the next few hours talking about what had happened in the time since we'd last seen each other while her contractions slowly increased to five minutes apart. She told me about the travelling she'd done around the northeast and about her time in Vermont. I updated her on her family, on Morelli, her friends, the bond's office, and Rangeman. I left out the details about her mother becoming a full-blown alcoholic and going to Utah to identify a body that had matched hers. Those situations could be discussed later. She had been under considerable stress already. I didn't think it would be healthy for her or the baby to add to it. Stephanie was ten minutes away from the one-hour mark on her five-minute contractions when her water broke all over the living room floor.

"I'll call the doctor while I change," she said, peeling off her wet clothes. "Can you grab the stuff? I have a duffle bag and the car seat in the closet by the front door. Oh, but the base thing for the car seat is in my car."

I grabbed her bag and the car seat from the closet and took them to my car before getting the base out of her car. I threw everything in the backseat of the Cayenne and went back inside to help her. She met me at the front door wearing the same t-shirt, but different shorts and flip-flops and carrying her purse.

"The doctor will call the hospital to let them know to expect us. She said to go directly to the Labor & Delivery unit and they would get me admitted," she said as we walked to the car.

"My mother works there," I told her as we pulled out of the driveway. "She's a nurse in that unit."

"You're kidding!" Stephanie said. "So even if I hadn't called you, I might have met your mother?"

I nodded. "Yes, and she would have been in your room the second she knew you were there. I'm not sure if she's working today, but if so her shift will be over in half an hour." I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. "And speaking of mothers, I promised to keep yours updated. Do you want to tell her we're headed to the hospital or me?"

"You talked to my mother already?"

"I called on my way up here. You or me?"

Stephanie took a few seconds to consider. "I'll do it."

I could see her hands trembling as she dialed her parents' number. I watched her face out of my peripheral vision and knew the moment her mother answered the phone.

"Hi, Mom," she said tearfully. I listened while she told her mother about her contractions and that her water had broken. She told her which hospital we were going to and answered a few other questions. Nothing complex. Nothing about why she left or what she'd been thinking. I sent up a silent thanks to God for helping Helen keep her head on straight at the right time. Stephanie told her mother she loved her and hung up the phone.

"They'll come up to the hospital after Dad gets done with his morning pick-ups," she said, handing my phone back. "Thanks. I needed that."

I squeezed her hand and brought it up to my lips as we pulled into the hospital lot. It was only six blocks away from the house, so we had gotten there in less than ten minutes. The hospital was trying a new valet parking service, so I passed off the keys to the valet before helping Stephanie get to the maternity floor. We had to be buzzed into the unit by a nurse, who guided us to the left towards the labor and delivery rooms. We were following a blonde nurse named Joanne to Stephanie's room when I heard my mother call out my name. She was coming out of the room next door to Stephanie's and looked stunned to see us there.

"Is that your mother?" Stephanie asked while breathing through a contraction.

"Yes," I said, holding up a finger to indicate that my mother should wait. After getting Stephanie into her room, where the nurse began taking vitals and asking her questions, I went out to the hallway, where my mother was standing at the nurses' station.

"Tell me everything," she demanded. "Why didn't you tell me that you'd found her?"

"She called me around one this morning to say she was in labor and that she was here in Newark at a friend's house. Her friend is in Prague, so she was alone and scared. I got there a little after two and we talked while we waited for her labor to progress."

"So are you two going to be in a relationship and raise this baby together?"

"Yes, we are."

She nodded. "Okay, that's good. How are you doing?"

I took a moment to think about it. "It's surreal."

She patted me on the arm. "I'm sure it is. I'll be off shift here in about ten minutes, so I'll stop by before I leave."

The nurse was checking Stephanie's cervix when I arrived back in her room. Stephanie had changed into a pale pink hospital gown and was looking uncomfortable.

"You're at seven centimeters," the nurse said. "That's good news. Only three more to go and you'll be ready to push. Are you going to want an epidural? Dr. Collins left one on order if you want it."

"I don't think so," Stephanie said.

"If you change your mind, just hit the call button. I'm getting ready to leave for the day, but your next nurse will check in with you here soon."

"Why aren't you getting the epidural?" I asked once the nurse was gone. "You've been in labor for nine hours already."

"It's my punishment," she replied, gasping as another contraction wracked her body.

"What the kind of logic is that, Stephanie? Even if you hadn't left town and had told me you were pregnant the day you found out, you'd still be in this pain. If you want to give birth without pain medication, then fine. But using it to punish yourself for leaving town is ridiculous."

Stephanie looked surprised, but determined. "You don't get to decide how I punish myself. If I want to do so by not having any pain medicine for childbirth, then that's what I'll do."

I didn't respond, but took a seat on the plastic couch that sat along the wall and took stock of the room. There were cabinets along one wall, along with a scale and other items used to take care of the baby after birth. There was a bathroom on the opposite side of the room and a television mounted in the corner. The walls were painted beige and the floor was laminate oak. The nurse had informed us that Stephanie would be in here while she was in labor and to deliver the baby. She would be moved a couple of hours after giving birth to the mother-child unit. As the father, I was allowed to be with her around the clock, but other visitors were restricted to the hospital visiting hours. Stephanie looked like she was about to say more when my mother walked in carrying her purse.

"Hi, Stephanie. I'm Lola," she said, taking a seat on the edge of Stephanie's bed. "How are you feeling?"

"I've been better," Stephanie replied. "This is worse than I thought it would be. I can't believe anyone does this more than once."

"You forget the pain after a while. Seeing your children get hurt is much worse," my mother responded, and I could see anger simmering in her expression. "Seeing my son hurt these past few months has been far worse than giving birth ever was."

"Mom," I said, giving her a look that she ignored.

"I know," Stephanie said quietly. "I've hurt a lot of people, him the most."

"I don't think you know the extent of it, Stephanie. Talking to Carlos after he went out to Utah—"

"Mom, that's enough," I said, standing up.

"What?" Stephanie asked. "What happened in Utah?"

"Nothing we need to talk about right now," I said, not breaking eye contact with my mother.

"Tell me!" Stephanie demanded. "What happened? It was obviously bad."

Between my stubborn mother and my stubborn girlfriend, I knew no one was getting out of that room without answering the question. "There had been a Jane Doe in Utah who matched your physical description. I had to go out there to be able to rule it out as you."

Stephanie went pale. "You'd thought I might be dead?"

"I went out there to rule it out."

Stephanie closed her eyes momentarily, reached for a plastic pale that sat on the table by her bed, and got sick. I went over to her and held her hair back. Once she stopped gagging, my mother took the pale and emptied it in the bathroom, returning with a wet washcloth for Stephanie. I walked around the bed, grabbed my mother by the arm, and pulled her out of the room.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked as soon as we were in the hall.

"I don't know how you can be so quick to forgive her," my mother replied hotly. "While she was running around God knows were, I was the one that had to see the hurt in your face whenever you talked about her. I had to hear it in your voice whenever I talked to you on the phone. I bet you haven't been showing her that side."

"Because this isn't the time for it. Stephanie and I had a chance to talk before we got here. I'm still angry with her, but I'm working through it. She knows how I felt."

"So I can't be angry that she hurt my son?" my mother shot back. "I can't be upset that she could have put my grandchild at risk by not telling anyone where she was going or that she was even pregnant?"

"I'm not saying you can't be angry, Mom. I understand why you are. But I hadn't told her about Utah because she was stressed enough. I didn't think it would be healthy for her or the baby to have any more added to that. I would have thought that you, not only as a nurse but as a mother, would have respected that."

My mother wiped a tear from her cheek. "I'm sorry, Carlos. I didn't know that you hadn't told her about Utah, but I still shouldn't have said anything to her. I didn't intend to do so when I went in there. It just came over me. Please apologize to her for me. She probably doesn't want to see me right now."

I pulled my mother into a hug. "You're tired. Go home and get some sleep. I'll call you when the baby is born."

I went back into Stephanie's room and found her crying. I sat down on her bed and took hold of one of her hands.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. I've hurt you so much. And my family and my friends. And _your_ family. I didn't even consider them until now."

"Stephanie, my mother shouldn't have said anything."

Stephanie shook her head and wiped her cheeks. "No, I'm glad I know. I can't believe you didn't tell me."

"You're about to give birth. I didn't think any added stress was a good idea. Besides, it wasn't you. I hadn't been able to let myself believe that it was you. I just went out there to put the little part of my mind that said it might be to rest."

The doctor came in half an hour later on her morning rounds.

"How are you doing, Stephanie?" she asked, eyeing me with interest.

"The contractions have been really hard since I got to the hospital," Stephanie said. "When is it going to end?"

"Let's check on that," the doctor replied. "I'm going to see if you've dilated any more. Is he staying?"

"Yes, this is my…boyfriend, Carlos," Stephanie replied, tripping over the words slightly. I could understand that. Hearing her refer to me as her boyfriend, not to mention using my real name, was another surreal moment. The doctor likely attributed it to the pain of labor, unless Stephanie had mentioned the situation during one of her appointments. The doctor didn't give any indication that she was surprised as she instructed Stephanie to spread her legs.

"You're at nine centimeters," she replied, pulling off her rubber glove. "You're getting really close, which is why your contractions are worse. Once you get to ten, you can start pushing. I'll check on you again after I finish my rounds. It doesn't make sense to leave the hospital when you're this close."

I sat with Stephanie for the next half hour as her contractions continued to get more intense and closer together.

"Oh, it hurts," she cried. "I think I need to push."

I hit the button for the nurse and one appeared a minute later.

"She's feeling the urge to push," I said. The nurse immediately pulled on a glove and checked Stephanie again.

"You're fully dilated," she said brightly. She reached for a device that hung around her neck. "Please page Dr. Collins to room 3120 for a delivery."

The nurse instructed Stephanie not push just yet while she prepared the bed for the delivery and gathered a few supplies. Dr. Collins returned to the room about five minutes after the page wearing dark green scrubs and a pink cap covering her hair.

The nurse sat on one side of the bed and I was instructed to sit on the other. We were to help brace Stephanie's legs while she pushed. Once the baby started to crown, she would move down the bed to place her feet in stirrups for the delivery.

"You're doing great, Stephanie," Dr. Collins said after she had pushed for a few minutes. "A few more pushes and we're going to start seeing a head."

A sheen of sweat glistened on Stephanie's forehead and tears rolled down her cheeks as she continued to push. I would occasionally glance down to see if there were any progress, feeling a small jolt when I caught a glimpse of dark hair. After two more pushes, Stephanie moved down and put her feet in the stirrups. I held on to her hand as she pushed again. The doctor pulled on a blue surgical gown and fresh gloves before taking a seat on a stool at the end of the bed.

"Give me a good, strong push, Stephanie. That'll help get the head completely out."

Stephanie cried out as she pushed and I saw the baby's head slowly emerge from her body. The head turned in my direction and I could see the face I'd just seen on the ultrasound photos, capped with a head-full of dark brown hair.

"I can't push anymore," Stephanie said through a sob. "I'm so tired. It hurts too much."

"You have to, Stephanie. Just a little bit more. You're almost done," Dr. Collins told her.

"I can't."

I kissed Stephanie on the forehead. "You can do this, babe. You're strong. You've been through some really horrible stuff. This is a good thing. I know it hurts, but you're almost done. Let's meet our girl," I whispered to her. She looked at me for a moment before nodding.

The next push got the shoulders out and one last push brought the baby completely out. The nurse put a towel across Stephanie's stomach, where the doctor laid the baby, who wasn't crying, but looking around in confusion. Stephanie began crying and reached down to touch the baby.

"Hi, baby girl. Oh my gosh, she's really here."

I placed another kiss on Stephanie's forehead as I fought back the tears that had formed in my eyes as I'd watched my daughter be born. "I'm so proud of you, babe. You did a good job."

"She looks great," the doctor said as she rubbed the baby with another towel. "Very alert."

"She isn't crying. Shouldn't she be crying?" Stephanie asked.

"Not all babies cry right away," Dr. Collins said. "A lot of times they are so stunned by the trauma of being born that they don't really know how to react."

Two other women had come into the room as the nurse suctioned the baby's nose and mouth, actions that clearly pissed her off and made her cry.

I wiped the inside corners of my eyes and accepted the scissors that the doctor offered me to cut the umbilical cord. One of the women who had come into the room introduced herself as a Lactation Consultant and would help Stephanie through breastfeeding the baby for the first time. Another nurse took the baby over to table against the wall and began wiping her down. The doctor was still sitting at the end of the bed, rubbing Stephanie's lower abdomen as the afterbirth emerged. The baby was still crying as the nurse began stretching her out to measure her length.

"Seven pounds, two ounces, and nineteen inches long," the nurse announced to the room. "She's doing great."

The doctor finished with Stephanie and she was able to reposition back to the head of the bed. The nurse brought the baby over, wrapped in a blanket.

"I cleaned her up, but after you feed her and have a little bonding time, then I'll give her a bath and get her dressed," she told Stephanie, who looked anxious as the baby was placed in her arms.

I sat on the edge of the bed and observed as the Lactation Consultant talked to Stephanie about breastfeeding. I thought the whole process sounded unnecessarily complicated, not to mention rushed. Stephanie had just given birth. Didn't she earn a minute to breathe? Besides, wasn't it a natural instinct for the baby to feed as long as she was placed at Stephanie's breast? Why did you need a consultant?

I watched as the baby latched on to Stephanie's nipple and suckled, still feeling dazed about everything that had happened. In nine hours, I'd gone from sleeping in my bed, not knowing where Stephanie was to watching her feed our daughter just minutes after giving birth. The baby only ate for a few minutes before stopping. The consultant talked to Stephanie about burping the baby and a feeding schedule before leaving some papers on the table next to her. It was only after she left that I realized we were alone in the room. I'd been so wrapped up in watching my new family that I hadn't noticed anything else.

"Do you want to hold her?" Stephanie asked. I reached out and took the baby, amazed at how light she felt. I hadn't held a newborn since Sofia's youngest had been born four years ago, and he'd weighed almost nine pounds. The baby was still alert and watched me as I stared down at her. Her eyes were dark brown, as was her hair, and her skin tone was in the middle of the spectrum between mine and Stephanie's.

"She's beautiful," I said. "She looks a lot like Julie did when she was born."

"That's because they both look just like you," Stephanie replied.

"Do you have a name a picked out?"

"Oh yeah," Stephanie said sharply, causing the baby to startle and whimper. I patted her back to settle her and stroked her cheek with a finger.

"I had a name picked out, but if you don't like it, we can find something else," Stephanie said softly, leaning over to look at the baby. "What do you think of Stella Grace Manoso?"

"I think it's perfect," I said, watching as the baby made an effort to put her fingers in her mouth. "She looks like a Stella. My sister Celia will love it. Her favorite movie is _A Streetcar named Desire._ "

The baby, frustrated that her hand-to-mouth coordination wasn't perfect, shook her head in an attempted to gauge where her fingers were in relation to her mouth. I heard Stephanie let out a gasp.

"That was what she was doing!" she said. "I would feel her do this weird shaking thing sometimes, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I actually got worried that maybe she was having a seizure or something."

Stephanie grew quiet and after a few seconds, I realized she'd started to cry.

"What's wrong, babe?"

"You missed out on all of it," she said. "I deprived you of all of it—seeing the ultrasounds with me, feeling her move for the first time, finding out the sex, talking about how I'd feel her get hiccups or do that weird head-shaking thing. I am such an idiot."

I moved Stella to my right arm and hugged Stephanie with the left. "This is our fresh start. I trust you to tell me if something is wrong or to ask me the questions you need answered. I trust that you aren't going to leave again, and that you're going to be a great mother to Stella. Yes, I am still a little angry and hurt, but it isn't anything that won't pass with some time. I forgive you for leaving, and I hope you can forgive me for making you feel like you couldn't come to me."

"I do forgive you."

"Then this is the last time we're having this conversation," I said. "You'll still have to face everyone else, but you and I are good. Okay?"

I felt Stephanie's body relax against mine. "Thank you."


	7. Day 1 reunited part 2

**May 23** **rd** **-3 p.m.**

Stephanie and Stella were moved to a different room on the other side of the maternity unit shortly after the birth due to an influx of pregnant women into the hospital. The new room was set up in a similar style, but without as much medical equipment. Helen had called while Stephanie was feeding the baby for the second time to say that she, Frank, Valerie, and Edna were in the waiting room. Once the baby was fed, I'd told Stephanie I was going to the cafeteria and would stop to tell her family how to find her. I wanted to give them some time alone to catch up and talk about what had happened.

After pointing the Plums in the direction of Stephanie's room, I'd called my own family. My grandmother had answered the phone and promised to spread the word of the birth. My next call was to Ella, who had been planning to turn the office in my apartment into a room for the baby as soon as I'd told her that Stephanie was pregnant. She had everything ready to go and had been waiting to get started until I told her that I'd found Stephanie and that she was coming home with me. I could hear the excitement in Ella's voice as I told her about Stella and made a mental bet with myself about which caterer she would use to feed the men for the next couple of days while she devoted her time to getting the baby's room set up. All of Ella's four children lived out of state, so I often thought she channeled some of her maternal instincts into the men she looked after, including me. I also asked her to pack a bag for me and to send it up with a couple of my men who could pick up Stephanie's car and take it back to Rangeman.

I waited until Stella would be due for another feeding before going back up to the room. As I walked down the hall, I noticed Valerie sitting in the waiting room. Her body language told me that she was pissed off—arms and legs crossed while one foot jiggled rapidly. Since the rest of the family was still with Stephanie, I detoured into the waiting room. I took the seat next to Valerie, who gave me an annoyed look and a small snort.

"Problem?" I asked.

Valerie shook her head back and forth for at least thirty seconds without responding. "I don't understand how you can forgive her so easily. I mean, she ran off while pregnant with your child, didn't bother to tell anyone where she was going or the real reason she was leaving town, and stops calling home to let anyone know she's still alive. She only called _you_ when she finally went into labor and now she's all ready to come home like she hasn't been gone for eight months. She had everyone worried sick, turned our mother into an alcoholic, and I can only imagine how much she hurt you with this stupidity."

I took a minute to compose my answer to Valerie since she had done some pretty stupid shit herself when she was under enormous, life-changing stress.

"Let's make one thing clear: your mother turned _herself_ into an alcoholic. She'd been using alcohol to cope long before Stephanie left town. There were plenty of us who were worried about her, but your mother was the only one who became an alcoholic."

Valerie opened her mouth to speak, looking indignant, but I held up a hand to stop her.

"To address your first point—it hasn't been easy for me to forgive Stephanie. After I learned that she was pregnant, and the initial shock wore off, I was angry with her. For a second, I thought about giving up on her. It felt like she'd given up on me by not giving me a chance to know the truth. I knew I could never do that, nor did I really want to, but something had to change. I couldn't have met her the way I was a few weeks ago. We would have had an enormous fight and I don't know that we would have been able to recover from it. I ended up talking to a friend of mine who is a priest and someone I trust immensely because he has a level head and gives good advice. After I explained the situation to him, he'd said that my anger about her leaving town without telling me that she was pregnant with my child was understandable, and even justified, but asked me why I'd felt she had owed me an explanation about her leaving _before_ I'd known about the baby. I hadn't been willing to give her what she wanted—a serious, committed relationship—so why should I have expected anything from her? He said that she's a grown woman who was perfectly capable of making decisions about leaving and that I didn't have the right to be angry with her for making a choice about her life."

"But we had no idea where she was," Valerie said. "Or if she was okay, or why she left. We were worried sick about her."

"We were justified in worrying about her," I agreed. "And sometimes worry looks like anger. My friend pointed out that part of the anger I was feeling was at myself. I hadn't been willing to commit to a relationship with Stephanie, which I'd made clear to her, and I'd suspected that it was a large part of the reason why she hadn't told me about the baby. He asked me if I'd thought it would have been fair for Stephanie to be angry with me for not wanting a committed relationship with anyone. I said no, because it was my life and my choice to make. He said we had both made the decisions we'd thought were best for our lives based on the situation as we knew it. He said that I had to learn to forgive myself for not being more open to a relationship with her and to forgive her for not telling me about the baby so that we could move on with our lives and focus on what was important. He said our daughter deserved better, and that the beginning of her life shouldn't be overshadowed with anger. So I began working on forgiving Stephanie four weeks ago and it was fully achieved at 10:07 this morning when she gave birth. I don't have justify my actions or feelings to anyone, but I hope that you and the rest of your family will try to move on from this not necessarily for your own sakes, or even Stephanie's, but for Stella's."

Valerie was quiet after that, but unwound her arms and legs. I hoped my words not only sank in with Valerie, but that she'd share them with her family. I had just stepped foot out of the waiting room when the doors to the unit opened and Tank appeared, carrying a black duffle bag.

"When night shift reported you'd left the building in the middle of the night like a bat out of hell and hadn't come back, I'd assumed it had something to do with Stephanie," he said, handing me my bag. "Congratulations. Not just on the baby, but also on finding Stephanie. Took you long enough."

"I can't take the credit for finding her," I admitted. "She called me last night to tell me she was up here in Newark, alone, and in labor."

I gave Tank the address to where Stephanie had been staying so that he and Hal could stop by to pick up her car. I told him to make sure Ella had any help she might need.

"She's already informed us that all meals are being catered by some restaurant for the next two days while she gets the baby's room ready," he told me. "She said if anyone wanted to complain, they could come see her about it directly. No one's been that stupid yet, but it's still early. And I wanted to tell you that one of my cats is pregnant, so if Stella needs a kitten, I can bring her one."

"If you bring a cat to my apartment, I'll chop you up and feed you to it."

Tank looked thoughtful for a moment. "That'd be a hell of a way to go."

I ran into the rest of the family leaving Stephanie's room a minute later. Helen's eyes were red from crying, but she smiled when she saw me.

"The baby is beautiful," she said. "And Stephanie is fine. God, I've never been so relieved in my life."

"Agreed."

"And you two are finally an item," Edna said with a smile. "It's about damn time."

I nodded and walked around them into the room. "Again, I agree."

Stephanie was sitting up in bed, feeding the baby. She was wiping nose with a tissue, and her eyes were red like her mother's.

"How did it go?"

Stephanie shrugged. "Dad and Grandma were pretty much as I expected. My mother was upset, but relieved that I was back. She told me she ended up going to rehab because she began drinking too much after I left."

"That wasn't your fault, Stephanie."

"I know," she said. "And that's what Mom said too, but Valerie blames me. She yelled at me and stormed out."

"She'll come around," I said, sitting down next to her.

I watched her nurse the baby, burp her, and change her diaper. Despite Stephanie's fears, she had picked up on some of the basics quickly. Stella, exhausted from eating, had fallen to sleep easily. I took the baby from Stephanie and put her in the little plastic bassinette next to the bed.

"Get some sleep," I told Stephanie.

She nodded. "I will, but will you kiss me? You've only kissed me on the forehead so far."

I opened my mouth to protest, but quickly realized that she was right. Why _hadn't_ I kissed her yet?

I sat down on the bed, put one hand on her waist and another behind her head before pulling her into me. Kissing her for the first time in months was invigorating and got rid of the fatigue I'd been feeling. She wrapped her arms around me and deepened the kiss. We broke apart a minute later, both breathless.

"Wow," she said. "I've missed that. I missed you."

"Me too, babe."

Later that evening, after we had rested and eaten dinner, my mother, father, and grandmother showed up to the hospital. They kept their visit brief, since my mother had to go to work on the other side of the floor afterwards. My father immediately took a liking to Stephanie, which I could tell helped her feel more relaxed. My grandmother, who required a translator, also liked Stephanie. My mother had greeted her, but had stayed beside me to talk while the rest of the family was there. They had each held Stella and talked about how beautiful she was. My mother had been especially excited, since she got to hold babies constantly, but they were never her own family. After bidding my father and grandmother farewell, my mother stayed behind. She took a seat on the edge of Stephanie's bed and I held my breath.

"I wanted to apologize for earlier," my mother said to her. "I should have never said anything to you. Carlos is a grown man; he can take care of himself. And I know you did what you thought was best. You're here now, and I have a beautiful little granddaughter thanks to you, so I'd like to start over."

Stephanie gave her a small smile. "Me too, but I can understand why you were angry with me. He's your son, and I hurt him. Stella's only a few hours old, but I already know I'd rip anyone apart who tried to hurt her."

My mother gave Stephanie a hug and stood up to leave. "Thank you, Stephanie. I have to go to work now, but I'll stop and see you guys in the morning before I leave. I told your brother and sisters to not visit today, but they won't stay away for long, so be prepared."

Celia and Sofia would definitely be around to visit, since they both lived in Newark and had kids of their own. Aurelia and Silvia both lived in New York and neither had kids, so it was anyone's guess if they would come. My brother would be dragged in by his wife, who would undoubtedly love Stephanie. I could at least relax in the knowledge that they would all be supportive of us, even if they were loud and occasionally embarrassing.

Sleep came in two hour increments throughout the night, which was fine for me, but I could tell it wasn't enough for Stephanie. By morning, she had dark circles under her eyes and looked on the verge of tears.

"My nipples hurt," she whimpered as Stella latched on to one. "I don't like breastfeeding."

"I'm sure you'll get used to it," I told her. "And she won't always need to eat this often, will she?"

Stephanie gave me a horrified look. "God, I hope not. I think my nipples might fall off if she has to do this for too long."

I took Stella after she was done eating and sat in the rocking chair with her while Stephanie went to take a shower. I kept thinking about Julie, since Stella looked just like she had at birth, and wondered what she would say when I told her. Would she be happy that Stephanie and I are finally together and have given her a new little sister? Would she be upset that I was going to raise Stella because I hadn't stuck around to raise her and had given the job to her stepfather?

I decided to call Rachel and tell her first. She would be able to tell me how she thought Julie would react. Maybe she would suggest that _she_ be the one to tell Julie instead. It might be easier coming from someone she knew better.

"Hey, stranger," Rachel said when I called. "We were beginning to wonder if you'd fallen off the face of the Earth. We haven't heard from you since February."

"I know. There's been a lot going on," I said, looking down at Stella and thinking that was the understatement of the decade. "That's actually why I'm calling."

"Is everything okay? Is someone sick?"

"No, everyone's fine. It's really good, actually. I wanted to talk to you about it before telling Julie."

I heard Rachel gasp. "Are you and Stephanie getting married?"

I was momentarily stunned by that leap in assumption. "Not right now, but we are in a relationship. I guess that's two things to tell her."

"She'll be so happy," Rachel replied. "She has been hoping you and Stephanie would get together ever since the kidnapping. She said it was obvious that you two loved each other. She didn't understand what the problem was."

Even my twelve year-old daughter could see that I'd been an idiot. "Well, the other thing is that Stephanie gave birth to our daughter yesterday morning."

There a second of silence on the other end of the phone. "That's fantastic! Congratulations! Why didn't you say anything before?"

"Like I said, there was a lot going on," I said, not interested in sharing the details of the past eight months with my ex-wife. "I wanted to tell Julie, but I wasn't sure how she might feel about it, especially because I'm going to be fully involved this time around."

I heard Rachel yell for Julie. "You can find out how she feels about it when you tell her." I waited while she told Julie it was me and handed off the phone.

"Hey, when are you coming back to visit?" she asked. "I haven't seen you since November, and you only called for a few minutes back in February."

"Soon. I actually called to give you some news."

"Are you dating Stephanie now?" she asked quickly. "You'd better be. I'm tired of waiting."

"Yes, we are together, but what I called to tell you was that Stephanie and I just had a baby together yesterday."

Like her mother, there was a moment of silence before Julie let out a scream. "OH MY GOD! That's so great! Boy or girl?"

"It's a girl," I said, momentarily thrown by Julie's exuberance. "Her name is Stella, and she looks a lot like you did when you were born."

"Send a picture to Mom's phone so I can see her."

I placed the baby in my lap and snapped a picture of her before sending it to Rachel's phone.

"I just sent it," I said, picking Stella back up as she started to whimper. I could hear Julie calling out for her mother to check her phone.

"She _does_ look like you did when you were born," I heard Rachel say in the background. "Except for the nose. She must have Stephanie's nose."

"I'm glad she looks like me," Julie said. "Olivia and Tony don't really look like me. They look more like Dad."

"None of my children look much like me," Rachel said sadly in the background. "I don't know what happened."

"You should bring Stephanie and Stella with you the next time you come to Miami," Julie said. "I can't wait to see them."

"I'm supposed to be in Miami at the end of next month, but I doubt they are going to be up to travelling that far."

"Then maybe I can come visit you in New Jersey?" Julie asked, and by the tone of her voice, I suspected she was simultaneously asking for her mother's permission along with mine.

"We'll see," I heard Rachel say.

"Are you okay with this?" I asked Julie.

"Um, yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because I didn't raise you, but I'll be raising her."

"Mom told me about why you let Dad adopt me," Julie said. "It doesn't bother me. It just means I get to have three parents, which is cool. But I'm glad you are going to be a dad to Stella. I think you're pretty good at it."

Hearing Julie say that lifted a weight off my chest that I hadn't realized was there. Her approval meant I didn't have to feel like I was betraying her every time I looked down at the baby in my arms and felt my heart miss a beat. I kissed Stella's head, which was covered by a little pink hat, and talked to Julie for a few more minutes about what she had been doing since I'd last spoken to her. It was the first moment of true peace I'd felt in over eight months. Peace had never felt so good.


	8. Day 3 reunited

**May 24** **th**

"Did we get everything?" Stephanie asked me for the fifth time in half an hour.

"Yes, dear," I replied. That response earned me a dirty look.

"Did you make sure you that you got _everything_ out of the house?"

"I walked around the place three times to be sure. You didn't have that much left. The rest of your stuff was in the trunk of your car, which is already back in Trenton."

Stella had just been returned after undergoing her newborn hearing test, which was the final step before she and Stephanie could be released from the hospital. The nurses had declared the baby _perfect_ , and had told us that Stephanie couldn't drive or lift anything heavier than Stella for the next two weeks. I watched Stephanie roll her eyes, but she didn't say anything. While she crammed the last of her clothes back into her duffle bag. I got Stella buckled into her car seat. The nurse returned to the room with a wheelchair a few minutes later, ready to take us down to the car. After ensuring that I had installed the car seat base correctly and that Stella was secured, the nurse waved us off and we headed towards home.

Stephanie fell asleep in the back seat next to Stella about ten minutes after we left the hospital, so the ride was silent until we pulled into the Rangeman garage an hour later. She woke up when she heard me turn off the car.

"Home sweet home," she said quietly.

When we got off the elevator on the seventh floor a few minutes later, it was to find Ella pacing the foyer.

"Welcome home!" she said, pulling Stephanie into a hug. "I'm so glad you're back, Stephanie."

"Thanks, Ella," Stephanie replied. "It's good to be back."

"Now, go right in and check out the nursery," Ella said, opening the apartment door for us. "Let me know if something isn't to your liking or if you think something is missing. But first things first, let me see that baby."

"You had her get a nursery set up?" Stephanie asked me, looking surprised. She had been talking about all of the things she needed to buy once we got home, so I had decided to let the nursery be a surprise.

"I called her while you were visiting with your parents the day she was born," I said, wrapping an arm around her waist while Ella relieved me of the car seat. "Ella already had everything planned. I just had her put the plans in motion."

"Oh, you are gorgeous," Ella said to the baby as she set the car seat down on the couch and began unbuckling her. She lifted her gently out of the seat and held her. "Seriously, this is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. Even more beautiful than my children and grandchildren. But if you ever repeat that to any of them, I'll call you dirty, rotten liars."

My office had been in a room that was only accessible through my bedroom. A set of French doors had been installed in the wide, arched doorway that joined the two rooms. The doors had been there when the apartment had been initially remodeled, but I'd had them removed for some reason that I couldn't recall at this point. The doors were currently closed and Ella was almost bouncing with nervous energy, ready to reveal her work.

"Like I said, if you don't like something, we can change it," she reminded us. "But I hope you love it as much as I do."

Ella gestured for us to open the doors and followed us into the renovated room. I heard Stephanie gasp, and even I was momentarily stunned by the change. The walls had been painted with vertical stripes in two shades of pastel green. A black silhouette of a large tree had been painted into a corner with branches and leaves that extended over two walls. A black crib with black-and-white polka dot bedding was against one wall and a white changing table with storage was against another. The letters _S G M_ were displayed in separate frames that hung above the bed, appearing the hang from a large branch of the tree. A black-framed mirror hung above the changing table under the other major branch of the tree. Along the lower parts of the wall were silhouettes of flowers that appeared to grow out of the baseboards and a larger silhouette of a little girl blowing bubbles was on the wall by the door. The windows were framed by sheer white curtains that touched the floor, but I noticed shades that would allow the room to be darkened. There various other coordinating storage containers around the room holding various baby paraphernalia. A baby swing and a bouncy seat had been placed in a corner. A couple of stuffed animals were in the bed and on the changing table.

I looked over at Stephanie to see what she was crying. "Oh, Ella," she said in an awed whisper. "It's perfect." She crossed the room and hugged Ella. "Thank you for doing this."

She began crying in earnest. "Why am I crying so much? I thought I'd get over that once I had the baby."

"It's the hormones, dear," Ella said kindly. "You'll cry over anything and everything for a few more weeks."

"You really did a great job, Ella," I said, amazed at the obvious amount of work that had gone into the room. The woman deserved a pay raise, or at least an enormous bonus.

"Do you like your new room, Stella?" Ella asked her, walking around the room and pointing out various things to the baby, who had finally woken up. She allowed Ella to take her on a tour of the entire room before she began to cry.

Stephanie fed the baby while I took care of bringing our belongings up to the apartment. A trip into my dressing room showed me that Ella had been busy preparing space for Stephanie. She had unpacked the suitcase that had been in Stephanie's car and had put away the clothes. I went to begin unpacking, but Ella came into the room and shooed me away.

"Go be with your family, I'll take care of that," she said. "I love saying that. I'm so glad they're here."

"Me too," I said. "You did an amazing job with nursery, Ella. Thank you."

Ella waved a dismissive hand. "I loved doing it. Knowing that Stephanie and the baby would be home has kept me going strong for the last forty hours. I'll crash tonight though. Louis cut me off from coffee after breakfast."

"Take the rest of the day off," I said. "You've more than earned it."

She shook her head as she began sorting laundry. "I have to make sure the caterers show up on time with lunch and I'll need to get dinner started in a few hours. Once dinner is over, then I'll rest."

I was going to hold her to that, even if it meant telling Louis to lock her in their apartment and not let her out until morning.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of feedings, diaper changes, and intermittent naps. I surprised Stephanie by returning her cell phone to her while Stella was sleeping . I'd kept it after I'd broken into her storage unit, and while she had been in the hospital, I'd managed to get it set up under her old number. She ended up calling Lula and Connie to catch up. It felt good to have her in my apartment and to hear her talking to her friends, even laughing when Lula told her about some of the things that had happened to her since becoming Vinnie's new BEA. She covered the phone when I sat down next to her.

"Would you mind if I asked Lula and Connie to come over to visit tomorrow?" she asked.

My immediate instinct—the one that had kept the apartment out of prying eyes for so many years—wanted to say no, but I knew I couldn't do that. This was as much Stephanie's place now as it was mine. If she wanted to have friends or family to visit, I couldn't stop her. I didn't want to stop her. I knew she valued her own privacy as well, so we wouldn't have people coming over constantly or unannounced.

"Babe, you don't need my permission," I told her. "This is your home now too."

She gave me a grateful smile and a kiss before returning to her call to invite her friends over. I spent a few minutes watching her while she talked on the phone. She had to stop to feed Stella while she caught up with Mary Lou. I rubbed the baby's head while she ate, amazed at how much I loved her already. My mother had been right—even though I loved my other daughter, I'd had no idea what that love would look like when I was an active part of my child's life. Stella may have only been alive for two days at this point, but I'd spent more time with her in those two days that I probably had spent with Julie in her first five years. That also brought about a significant amount of guilt, even though Julie had been terrific when I'd told her about Stella. She'd been happy, even excited, so I had pushed my guilt aside.

Stephanie and I stayed in bed until nearly ten the next morning. Stella had woken up every two hours to eat through the night. Knowing that Stephanie was still sore from giving birth, I'd been the one to get up to get the baby out of her bed and bring her to Stephanie, who would feed her before I would change her diaper and get her back to sleep. I would only manage to get an hour of sleep before the cycle repeated. Stephanie would get a little longer, but not much. We both had dark circles and bags under our eyes come morning.

"This baby is trying to kill us," Stephanie muttered as Stella's cries rang out through the apartment.

"It won't last forever," I told her. "That's the mindset I had to use during my time in the Army, and I'm going to use it again now."

Stella was fed and laying in a swing that rocked her back and forth while Stephanie and I ate our own breakfast and Ella went through the apartment doing her usual routine. It was calm and quiet, which I didn't expect to last too much longer given Stella's feeding schedule and the impending arrival of Lula and Connie later that afternoon. The phone rang in the bedroom, indicating an internal page, so I went to answer it.

"Detective Morelli is at the front desk," Sal told me. "He wants to talk to Stephanie."

I told Sal to hold on while I asked Stephanie. I'd wanted to just say no, but it wasn't my place to do so.

"Morelli is here," I told her. "Do you want to talk to him or should I have him leave?"

Stephanie sighed. I had told her about Morelli moving on with the nurse, but like me, she had assumed that once she was back to town, he would want to talk to her.

"Yeah, let him come up," she said, wiping her mouth and pushing her plate way. "Might as well get it over with."

Ella began clearing breakfast away while we waited in the living room for Morelli. Stephanie was sitting on the couch, her leg bouncing nervously. I rested a hand on her knee.

"He needs to be able to say whatever is he wants to say," she told me. "I was actually in a relationship with him when I left town, so I deserve whatever he has to give me."

I heard a sharp knock on the door and went to answer it, but Ella beat me to the door. Morelli looked pissed off as he walked through the apartment towards the living room. He stared at Stephanie for a minute before glancing over to where Stella was sleeping in her swing. I saw a flash of pain cross his face as he looked at her, and I realized that he had probably come here with the smallest of hopes that the baby was actually his. One look at her was all that was needed to see that she was mine.

"Joe, I—," Stephanie began, but he held up a hand and she fell silent.

"Did you know about this?" Morelli asked me. "Did you know she was pregnant when she left?"

"Not until a month ago," I replied.

Morelli shook his head. "It wasn't bad enough that you two were screwing around in Hawaii, but then you decided to not bother using a condom?"

"What do you want, Morelli?" I asked, trying to keep my feelings in check.

"You don't talk to me," he snapped, walking over to get in my face. "You fucked my girlfriend and got her pregnant. You're the reason she left town."

Morelli's sharp voice had startled Stella, who woke up and starting crying. Ella rushed into the room and scooped the baby up.

"Why don't I take Stella downstairs for a while?" she suggested as she walked towards the door with the baby.

Stephanie stood up and came to stand in between Morelli and me. "Joe, it isn't Ranger's fault that I left. I left because I was scared and didn't know how to handle the situation."

"You could have fucking told someone!" Morelli shouted, and I felt Stephanie press herself back against me. "Instead of leaving town and having everyone worried sick over you, you could have said something. I would have been pissed off, but not nearly as pissed off as I am now."

I had a hard time believing that. Being told that Stephanie was pregnant with what was probably my child just weeks after finding her in a hotel room with me would have been more volatile. Morelli had spent the past six months with another woman, moving on with his life. He'd had some time to let go of some of his anger.

"Joe, I'm sorry that I didn't say something. I should have just told everyone so that we could have figured things out from there. I'm sorry I hurt you," Stephanie said. I could tell she was trying hard not to cry in front of Morelli, but her hormones were likely going to get the best of her.

Morelli watched her for a minute before stepping back. "Can we talk? Alone?"

Stephanie looked over her shoulder at me, the question lingering in her expression.

"Your call, babe," I said quietly.

"It's okay," she whispered. "I'll be fine."

I nodded and squeezed her hand before leaving the apartment. Regardless of whatever Morelli wanted to say, it wasn't going to change anything. His actions before and after she left had spoken volumes about what he'd felt for her and how much he had valued their relationship. I headed down to the fifth floor to grab some items from my office and check in with the rest of the men on shift.

"Let me know when Morelli leaves," I told Manuel, who was on the internal monitors. He gave me a nod and returned to his duty. I checked in with the other men on monitors, who reported that it had been business as usual during their shift. As I headed towards my own office, I saw Ella running towards the hallway from the dining room. My heart skipped a beat, thinking something was wrong with Stella, but then I realized she wasn't holding the baby.

"Where's my child?" I asked as she hurried past me.

"With Tank. I have to go check on lunch," she called out as she disappeared into the hall.

I headed over to Tank's office to find him sitting at his desk, holding Stella. He had her cradled in one arm while he attempted to type with the other hand. I was surprised to see how at ease he was holding a baby.

"Stephanie and I might be in the market for a nanny, if you're up for the job," I said, watching as Stella recognized my voice and tried to look in my direction.

"Bite me," he replied. "At least now I can have an idea of what you'd look like in pink. Are you sure this is your kid and not your clone?"

"She has Stephanie's nose and some curls in her hair," I said, taking the baby from Tank once she began to whimper. "And her skin tone is lighter than mine."

"It looks like someone shrank you in the dryer," Tank said. "It was kind of freaking me out."

I shook my head and headed to my office, where I grabbed my iPad and several files that had been left on my desk over the last couple of days.

"I heard there was a girl in the control room, so I rushed down" Lester said, knocking on my office door. "I didn't realize she was of the jailbait variety."

He ignored the glare I gave him and focused his attention on the baby. "Hey little lady, you're adorable."

He took the baby from me and walked around talking to her in a voice that I sincerely hoped to never hear him use again. I wasn't even sure he was speaking English at one point.

"What the hell are you doing, Santos?"

"Talking to your daughter," he said. "Babies love this sh—stuff. My daughter always smiled and laughed when I talked to like this when she was a baby."

He adjusted the baby so that she was snuggled against his chest. "Plus, they smell really good when they're first born. It's like new car smell." He sniffed the top of her head. "Damn, that's good stuff."

I couldn't do anything but stare in total shock as I watched Lester walk around the room with the baby. Ella appeared in the office a minute later. "There she is. I went back to Tank's office, but he said you had her."

"Not anymore," I said, nodding towards Lester. "Santos is smelling her and talking to her in a voice that should be reserved for dogs."

"Oh, baby talk is so sweet," Ella said, going over to rub the baby's back. "Yes, it is. And babies smell delicious when they're little. You just want to eat them up. Yes, you do."

"At least if this kid ever disappears, you know the psycho that has her in on the sixth floor," Lester joked, earning him a smack on the back of the head from Ella.

Manuel knocked on the office door. "Morelli's gone."

"Thanks," I said, going over to rescue Stella from Lester. "We're going back upstairs now."

Lester handed the baby over. "Goodbye, Stella. See you around."

"Sorry, sweetheart," I told Stella as we headed out of the office. "I forgot to warn you about the lunatics that work here."

Ella and Lester were walking out right behind us and said "He's talking about you" at the same time.

I found Stephanie sitting in the living room when we got back up to the apartment. Her eyes were red from crying.

"How did it go?" I asked her, handing her the baby when she held out her arms. She snuggled Stella up to her chest and kissed the top of her head.

"He told me about what he'd been doing since I left, about how hurt he'd been," she said. "But he said he still loved me and asked me if there was any chance that he and I could be together." She gave a small laugh. "He actually said he would help me with the baby and wouldn't try to stand in the way of you and me raising her together. I told him that you and I are together, and that even if I hadn't ended up pregnant, I would have ended things with him because I'd realized it just wasn't meant to be."

I sat down next to her and wrapped my arms around her. "Are you okay?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I am. I feel bad, but there's nothing I can do to change what happened."

I kissed her on the top of the head. "It's a new start, babe. Not just for us, but for you with your family and friends as well."

"I have a feeling Lula and Connie haven't changed any," Stephanie said, checking her watch. "I can at least count on some things staying the same."

She shifted around so that she could still be in my arms while she fed Stella. We were quiet for a few minutes while we relaxed and watched our daughter eat.

"She's always so happy when she's eating," Stephanie commented. "She's clearly my child."

"If I could eat my meals that way, I'd be happy too," I said with a smirk. Stephanie smacked me on the arm.

"You're a pervert."

"But I'm yours," I said, placing a kiss on her neck. "All yours."

The doctor had told us while Stephanie was in the hospital that she couldn't have sex for the next six weeks. Not that I'd expected her to want to have sex right after giving birth, but considering that I hadn't seen her for over eight months, the idea of six more weeks felt like an eternity. Lying in bed with her the night before had been comforting, albeit agonizing. But she was with me now, so I didn't have to wonder _if_ we would ever have sex again. I just had to wait for the _when._


	9. Day 83 reunited

**August 12** **th**

"Happy birthday, Daddy."

I opened my eyes to find Stella laying on my chest. She smiled and made the little noises she always made when she saw me.

" _Buenos días, mija,"_ I said, kissing the top of her head. Stephanie leaned over and gave me a kiss.

"I'm surprised you're awake before me," I said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she rested her head on my chest next to Stella.

"You always get up with her and let me sleep, so I decided to return the favor today," she said. A glance at the clock told me it was just after six. I was normally up at five.

While I was thankful for an extra hour of sleep, I cherished the quiet time Stella and I spent together in the mornings. Stephanie had struggled with repeated infections and pain related to breastfeeding beginning when Stella was a week old until she made the decision to stop nursing after a month. The switch to formula had allowed me to get up with Stella in the mornings without the need to wake Stephanie. I would wake up, get showered and dressed before Stella woke up at a quarter after five. I would change her diaper, feed her, and play with her until six, when Ella would bring up breakfast. Stephanie would get up and we'd eat breakfast together before I headed down to the office.

"I wasn't sure what to get your for your birthday," Stephanie said. "You can buy anything you want, and I don't know that you want anything that you don't already have, so this was all I could come up with."

"I appreciate it. But there is something you could do for me that you can count as a birthday gift for this and all future birthdays," I told her.

Stephanie perked up at the prospect. "Really? What is it?"

I stroked her hair as I spoke. "Marry me."

Surprise crossed Stephanie's face. We had talked about getting married in the future, but we hadn't decided when the _future_ would be. Without the stress of her relationship with Morelli, we'd discovered how well suited we were for each other, and our love had only deepened after Stella's birth. I'd always thought that if I were going to settle down with anyone, it would probably be Stephanie. Now I knew it would only ever be her.

"Are you sure about this?" Stephanie asked hesitantly. I nodded.

"It doesn't have to be right now, though I don't really know why we'd need to wait. I love you, and I don't want to have to spend another day without you."

Stephanie turned to Stella and stroked her cheek. "What do you think, Stella? Should Mommy and Daddy get married?"

Stella cooed and squirmed excitedly, which made us both laugh.

"I'll take that to mean you think we should," Stephanie said. "And I agree." She turned back to face me. "So, yes. I will marry you. And not just because I don't have to worry about a birthday gift ever again, though it does play a substantial role in my decision."

"Whatever gets you there," I replied. I kissed her gently and pulled her closer. I had a meeting at eight o'clock, and I had no intentions of leaving the apartment until the last minute possible. Before Stephanie and Stella, I'd worked ninety hours a week. Now, I never went over sixty, and always devoted at least one weekend day to spending time solely with Stephanie and the baby. For someone who hadn't been able to imagine himself in a committed relationship and being a hands-on father a year ago, I'd taken to the roles easily. My past was still there, as were my enemies. I was sure that I hadn't had my last close call, but I was going to be more cautious. I had more to live for these days: a family. Hopefully one that would grow with time.


End file.
